Re: Year 2000

[boothm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

A couple of things I have found that have helped get Y2K-compliant faster. 


1- make the date fields all 8,0.

2 - If a program has the famous 10000.01 in it, the chances are good that
just changing the H line with a Y in the header will allow the 10000.01 to
be removed.  So far, that has meant almost sudden compliance for a
surprisingly large group of programs.

3 -  Any program with serious date math in it might as well be converted
immediately to RPGLE.  There's usually not a lot of these kinds of
programs.  You get some ILE experience without being ground down with tons
of new stuff.  Also, the date operations that are available do away with
some of the old date validation routines.  (how many "lazy date checkers"
do you run across as you go through the programs?)

4 - leave all screens alone, excepting where there are century-sensitive
fields like birthdays.

5 - Do the easy libraries first, do the DDS first, then the CL, then the
RPG.

6 - Set a base-minimum set of standards to be reached.  Don't be over
ambitious, but do set a point of design below which you will not convert,
but will rewrite instead.

7 - Don't convert anything that has not been used in two years or more. 
Index it, archive it, delete it from active service.

8 - make a date routine program with all sorts of stuff in it and be sure
it works.  Then you have a source to go to to get consistent solutions to
problems as you go through the programs.  If a problem comes up and isn't
in your role model. then stop and add it in; it'll come up again.

Not very spectacular solutions I know, but so far they've worked for me.


-----------------------------------------------------------
boothm@earth.goddard.edu
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