Unigroup's May '98 Meeting Announcement

Topic:

The Year 2000 Problem

UNIX and Distributed Systems: The Current Year 2000 Hotspot

Speaker:

Mr. Leon Stevens, President & CEO,
Millennium Technologies Group

Date:

Thursday, May 21, 1998

Location:

The Chase Manhattan Bank (formerly Chemical Bank)

55 Water Street, South Tower

13th Floor Conference Rooms B+C

Time:

6:00 - 6:30 PM Registration

6:20 - 6:35 PM Ask the Wizard - Questions, Answers and Current Events

6:35 - 6:45 PM Unigroup Business

6:45 - 9:30 PM Main Presentation

Introduction:

The phrase "Year 2000" or "Y2K" Problem is a general term for a variety of issues facing the software and hardware industries. These issues include:

1. The proper handling of date code which uses 2-digit years,
2. The inability to distinguish between the centuries 1900 and 2000 if 2-digit years are used in software and hardware systems.
3. Code which was simply never designed to work past the current century.
4. Faulty Leap-Year logic which may cause problems in February 2000,

You may not have imagined the types of systems which could be effected by this problem. Ask yourself these questions:

1. Is your computer's BIOS Y2K compliant? If not, your computer may not boot or function correctly after 01-JAN-2000.
2. Is your operating system Y2K compliant? Many become compliant only after various patches are installed.
3. Is your database Y2K compliant?
4. Is the software you use Y2K compliant?
5. Is the software you write Y2K compliant?
6. Are the the development libraries you link against Y2K compliant?
7. Are all the devices which you use in every day life Y2K compliant? This includes: Electronic Day-Timers, VCRs, Microwaves, Cars. Yes, an article was recently published about a Car whose computer will malfunction at Midnight Central Time on 01-JAN-2000.

Here are a couple of good web resources on the Year 2000 problem:

1. The Year 2000 Information Center,
2. Yardeni's Year 2000 Page,
3. SCO's Y2K Page.

Description of Talk:

The Y2K problem is very complex and as with most difficult problems, can not be solved simply by applying more resources. Programming has historically been more art than science and programmers have always found novel, non-standard and unpredictable ways of handling data, including of course dates. A typical large system represents hundreds of person years of such creative work, which is then consistently modified, under time pressure, over a period of years. Large-scale systems are therefore by their nature, resistant to mass change. The first 60% - 70% of the problems are relatively easy; the remainder get progressively more difficult. The solutions are not only dedication and intelligence, but the most critical factor, a lot of specific Y2K experience.

Mr. Leon Stevens, President, Millennium Technologies Group, will discuss the state of Year 2000 conversions. Many mainframe systems are now in their testing phase. Corporations and vendors have largely ignored distributed systems to this date. As organizations shift their focus, people are discovering that there really are Y2K issues in this newer environment. Mr. Stevens will present some of the lessons learned "from the front lines" of the distributed environment and alternatives that are available to business and systems managers.

Speaker Biography:

Mr. Leon Stevens is the President & CEO of Millennium Technologies Group, Inc. He has been involved in the solution of Year 2000 problem in both open and legacy systems for the past five years and has over twenty years of software engineering experience in application and systems software.

Company Biography:

Millennium Technologies Group, Inc. was established in 1995 to provide conversion services and software tools to address the Year 2000 problem. The company has a history of providing the highest quality Year 2000 Tool Based Solutions to Fortune 1000 companies. They are a reliable and cost effective business partner that has been consistently successful in providing solutions to this unique and extremely difficult problem.

Delivery Capabilities

Their primary targets for Year 2000 compliance are systems written in C and C++, (and their associated scripts, databases and languages such as SQL, Shell, VB, VC++, SQR, etc.). They also process code written in most languages (including PL/1, COBOL, HPS, Model 204, Pascal, etc.).

Services

Millennium offers the following main levels of conversion services:

-- Assessment
-- Identification
-- Remediation

The key issue is finding the date related logic errors, not simply identifying all the date sensitive variables in a system. In a windowing approach to Y2K, most lines of code referencing dates are harmless, and producing a list of tens of thousands occurrences is of itself little use. Their tools and our process are designed not only to identify date occurrences but are designed to apply our years of Y2K experience in categorizing and then identifying the much fewer lines of code that will cause the problems. Millennium will make adjustments to the tools for characteristics that are specific to the customer's code base. This process is refined and repeated until no more errors are found. Specific line-by-line correction alternatives are developed and recommendations for correction are made in a format from which either we or you can make the corrections. Upon your approval of the changes proposed in the Identification Phase, Millennium will correct the code as specified and deliver the completed systems.

PC Expo is being held this year at the Javits Center in NYC on June 16th-18th.
Unigroup has acquired complimentary PC Expo passes and we will be giving them out at this meeting!

Show Hours:

Tue, June 16th: 10:00 am - 5:00 pm

Wed, June 17th: 10:00 am - 5:00 pm

Thu, June 18th: 10:00 am - 4:00 pm

Refreshments will be served.

Please join us for this meeting, you won't want to miss it!

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