I went to a seminar earlier this year that Cognos presented about year 2000
problems.  I went in thinking that it was no big deal to modify all our Quizes.
We are a MANMAN shop and have hundreds of Quizes.  The seminar was a real
eye-opener and I wrote this email to my boss to summarize the problem.  So here
it is pretty much in its entirety:

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PROBLEMS
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1.  All the standardized date prompts only prompt for a two-digit year.  The
date prompts all assume the year 1900.  We can not just change it to assume year
2000 because the user doesn't have *any* opportunity to enter a year.

2.  Some quizes may have hardcoded dates that we are selecting against.  For
instance, select where date is greater than a given date.  Those dates may have
only two digit years.

3.  Quick screens may not allow for the entry of a four-digit year.

4.  Nearly all quiz reports show dates in the default format MMDDYY with a "/"
seperator.  We may want to show the century on those reports.

5.  When the year 2000 is upon us we will want to change the default century in
the Quiz Schema to 20.  All compiled reports (primarily Quick screens) will have
to be re-compiled since the default century is stored in compiled programs.

6.  Fiscal periods will be a special problem.  The century is not stored
anywhere.  For example, if a user wants to select in a date range from period 12
of year 1999 to period 2 of year 2000 the code would normally be something like
this:  SELECT IF X >= "9912" AND X <= "0002".  As you can see, we will never get
any records to meet this criteria.  We will need to do some kind of logic to
assume the fiscal century based on the fiscal year.

7.  There are a lot of programs where I have wanted to report 0 and 99 dates as
"00/00/00" and "99/99/99" so I have converted dates to characters. In almost all
cases, century 19 is assumed.

8.  If we change the date prompts to prompt for century, we will need to find
all the stream jobs that respond to the prompts and change those too.  This goes
for stream jobs that run standard ASK reports and utilities as well.


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PART OF THE SOLUTION
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Some of the fixes proposed by Cognos follow:

1.  We need to upgrade to version 8.19 of Powerhouse when it becomes available
(in June).  Version 7.29C8--(we are on version 7.29C)--will also be year 2000
compliant, but version 8.19 has some enhancements to assist with year 2000
conversions.  Some of the enhancements in version 8.19 are:

   A. A null date seperator.  This will allow us to fit an 8-digit year in
   a 6-digit column (i.e.  05211998 will replace 05/21/98).  It may not  be as
   easy to read, but will save the hundreds of hours of programming time it will
   take to make room for the century in our reports.
   B. No recompile necessary when we change the default century in the Schema.
   C. Prompt for 8-digit year in Quick screens but only display 6-digit year.
   This will also save a lot of programming time since we will not have to
   change the layout of all our screens.
   D. Defined century window.  This is like the default century, but a little
   more intelligent.  We can establish the default century based on the year
   entered.  For instance, Powerhouse will assume century 19 if the year is 98,
   but century 20 if the year is 01.

2.  Cognos is offering for sale the program Power2000.  This program is set up
to search source code for potential year 2000 issues based on pre-defined
criteria.  The program helps keep track of all the issues and helps keep track
of the project's progress.  The program can be set up to search any kind of
source code so we could use it in our Fortran code if necessary.  (Maybe
Ashtech's software engineers would even find it helpful in resolving any issues
with our company products.)  I was impressed with the product demo but I don't
think the product comes cheaply.  The salesman was evasive on the price, but
would finally admit that on average it costs from $15,000 to $60,000 depending
on which HP model we own.

I recommend that Ashtech purchase the program.  Year 2000 problems with our
Quizes will not shut down the company, but management and users rely very
heavily on quizes for the information they need to do their jobs effectively.

3.  Whether we buy Power2000 or not, some of the work to prepare for the year
2000 should be started now.

   A. I would like to modify all the standard date prompts to prompt for a
   4-digit year.  I would send an email to all ASK users to let them know
   they need to enter an extra two digits and tell them to notify me if they run
   a program that does not prompt for the century.  At the same time, I would
   have to modify all the affected stream jobs.
   B. In my spare time, I would start modifying reports to display all four
   digits of the year.  We could just wait for version 8.19 of Powerhouse and
   use the null date seperator, but those dates will be pretty hard to read.
   C. I would like to design the logic to select a fiscal period range that
   crosses centuries and begin to implement it in Quizes.
   D. As I bring a program up to year 2000 compliance, I will put something
   in the modification comments so I can track my progress.

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Now that many months have passed I have made a lot of progress in my Year 2000
project.  The company did not buy the expensive Power2000 and I have not yet
installed version 8.19 though I will at some point.

I ended up prompting for the two digit year and programming in assumed
centuries.  I also found that I needeed to sort on my assumed century for fiscal
periods.  And I decided to continue to display the 2-digit year on reports in
most cases.

Kim Williams
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