Is there an explanation of Y2K "compliance" for application programs? |
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What is a "commercial off-the-shelf" application program?
What's the difference between a Y2K compliant program, and
one which is "compliant with 'minor issues'" or "non-compliant"?
How do vendors assign their programs to these categories?
And what percentage of your programs are likely to be "non-compliant"?
This overview addresses these questions.
Commercial Off-the-Shelf Applications: An Overview of Y2K Compliance Issues
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How can you find Y2K problems in your application programs? |
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When assessing a computer to determine which application programs might have Y2K problems, we suggest that you follow a three-step process:
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It's important that you first find any Y2K problems which may
affect your priority application programs. These are the
programs which are critical to key departmental functions or your
important research or instructional work, and hence to your
department's and the campus's missions. For guidance in
identifying these priority applications, see
Prioritizing: Identifying Your Critical Computers & Software
For this reason, we suggest that you start with a paper exercise, before you actually begin physically inventorying the programs installed on your computer. You can begin by writing down the names of the
critical applications installed on your computer. Then, you can
conduct a physical inventory
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Inventory-only tools
What these tools doThese inventory-only tools report on what application programs are installed on a computer's disks. Depending on the tool, they may report on the names, versions, and vendors of your application programs, and may also provide additional information. (For example, some tools can report on whether Windows applications are 32-bit or 16-bit programs.) Typically you can print these reports or save them on your disk as text documents. Some of the more fully-featured commercial programs can also send these reports over a network to a central database on one of your PCs. This may allow you to see at a glance what applications are installed within your department, how many copies are installed, what versions are in use, and so on. What types of tools are availableThere are a variety of no-cost and commercial tools for this purpose.
For a list of some tools you might consider,
see
Software Tools for Finding & Resolving Y2K Problems
Most such tools are available for industry-standard PCs running DOS and Windows operating systems. A few tools are available for other types of computers, such as Macintoshes. Important limitations and caveats when using toolsThese tools won't do all the work for you. You'll still need to carefully check their reports, both to fill in any missing pieces and to verify some facts or conclusions. Some significant limitations and caveats (cautions) of inventory tools can include:
ExampleBelow is an excerpt from a sample report created on a PC running Microsoft Windows 95
using an inventory-only software tool,
Sassafras Software's
In the sample below, KeyAudit's tab-delimited text report was opened in Microsoft Excel, and just four columns (fields) from the report were selected for display: 
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Inventory & compliance status tools
What these tools doLike the inventory-only tools
In addition, tools in this category go further by also providing Y2K compliance information for at least some of the installed programs. Depending on the tool you're using, it may report some or all of the following:
Typically you can print these reports or save them on your disk as text documents. Some of the more fully-featured commercial programs can also send these reports over a network to a central database on one of your PCs. This may allow you to see at a glance what applications are installed within your department, how many copies are installed, what versions are in use, and so on. Some of these tools can also identify what numbers and percentages of your department's applications have Y2K problems, and track your department's progress over time in resolving these problems. What types of tools are availableTools in this category are likely to be commercial products.
For a list of some tools you might consider,
see
Software Tools for Finding & Resolving Y2K Problems
Most of these tools are available for industry-standard PCs running DOS and Windows operating systems. A few tools in this category are available for other types of computers, such as Macintoshes. Some of these inventory & compliance status tools are sold as 'stand-alone' programs, while others are included along with a number of other Y2K-related tools in "tools suite" products. Important limitations and caveats when using toolsIn addition to the three major
limitations and caveats
ExampleBelow is an excerpt from a
sample report
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First, if you're affiliated with the UC Berkeley campus, you can find a Y2K compliance summary for some key application programs used on campus in: Y2K Compliance Status of Selected Off-the-Shelf Applications Used at UC Berkeley Next, you can find a detailed list of many resources you can use to identify the Y2K compliance status of your critical application programs in: Commercial Off-the-Shelf Applications: Resources for Identifying Y2K Compliance We recommend that you use the following resources, in order: Vendors' Web sites |
How can you resolve Y2K problems in your application programs? |
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It's important that you first resolve any Y2K problems which may
affect your priority application programs. These are the
programs which are critical to key departmental functions, and to your
department's and the campus's missions. For guidance in
identifying your department's own priority applications, see
Prioritizing: Identifying Your Critical Computers & Software
The following are checklists offering suggestions for steps you might take to resolve Y2K problems or issues in your most-critical off-the-shelf applications. (Depending on your available time, you might later apply these steps to your other, less-critical applications.) The generic steps to take to resolve Y2K problems with each of your application programs are presented below. There are three different sequences of steps to take, depending on how each of your application programs has been classified: |
Non-compliant applications
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Compliant applications with 'minor issues'
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Compliant applications
Make sure that your computer's data has been completely backed up
and can reliably be restored before making any changes.
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Should you check further once a vendor has declared an application "compliant"? |
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So your software vendors have classified your most critical application programs as Y2K "compliant." You're relieved. Do you need to check any further? Yes. In the case of any applications which are critical to your department, we recommend that you consider spending a little more time to thoroughly look into their compliance status. Here are three reasons why:
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Some vendors might revise the compliance statements for your key programs
Many vendors have changed their products' compliance statements from time to time. This typically has occurred as a result of new information obtained from internal or customer testing, or of new vendor-provided "fixes." As a result, some products formerly declared to be "compliant" have later been reclassified as "compliant with issues" or even "non-compliant," and sometimes the opposite has occurred. These classification changes were particularly evident during 1998, but have continued into 1999. In the case of your mission-critical application programs - the ones on which key departmental functions are dependent - you may need to revisit the vendor's compliance statement at least once later during 1999, and possibly even more than once, in order to make sure that the compliance status of these programs hasn't changed. This can also help you determine whether your vendors have subsequently provided any newer updates or "patches" than those which you may already have installed. |
Victor Fanberg, who has been tracking commercial off-the-shelf applications for his US military agency, asserts on his Shrink Wrap Software .
Web page (which was last updated on December 29, 1997) that:
It is critical not to just accept the manufacturers' word for
compliancy. I've tracked almost 400 products for a year now and
still am finding the compliancy of 25% of those products change
every quarter. Sometimes a manufacturer discovers a bug after
further testing where they didn't feel any would exist. Other
times, a product is discontinued. I have examples of products
which a manufacturer believed their product was compliant, but it
was dependent on another which it was later discovered had Year
2000 problems.
Shifts in product compliance status have continued to occur into 1999, as noted in the March 15, 1999 Information Week article Updates on Y2K Status
notes:
It's hard to stay current on the year 2000 status of software and
hardware products. Between November [1998] and January [1999], the
status changed for 417 products, and significant updates were made
for another 1,000, says Infoliant Corp., which has a database on year
2000 product compliance [covering some 30,000 products].
Infoliant said last week that 188 products
lost their compliant status, while 128 noncompliant products were
made compliant.
Remarkably, the Y2K compliance status for many products continues to be revised even into late fall 1999. For instance, Infoliant Corp. reported in its November 8, 1999 press release, Almost 1,300 Hardware and Software Products Undergo Y2K Compliance Changes in October ,
that during the month of October 1999 alone,
1,291 products saw significant changes to their
compliance status or to their vendors' instructions for taking corrective action.
This included 398 compliance status changes, with 232 of these "negative."
In addition, there were 118 products "for which manufacturers withdrew all
Y2K disclosure information."
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Some "compliant" applications can exhibit Y2K problems if carelessly used
Some fully "compliant" applications can nonetheless exhibit Y2K problems if you use them carelessly, such as using dates incorrectly or running custom macros or scripts containing date-related programming errors. One example are Microsoft's latest versions (as of this writing) of its widely-used spreadsheet applications, Excel 2000 and Excel 97 for Windows and Excel 98 for the Mac OS. Although Microsoft asserts that all of these applications are "compliant," the company's compliance statements include a sizeable list of "usage errors" which can potentially result in Y2K problems. Some other spreadsheet and database programs, in particular, may be subject to similar problems. You can find a general discussion of these topics in Data Files: Finding & Resolving Y2K Problems
and
Data Sharing Methods: Finding & Resolving Y2K Problems
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For this reason, it's important that you check your vendor's compliance statements for any "fine print" which may help you understand how your critical application programs handle dates, and to determine whether is possible that these programs can be used in ways which might result in Y2K problems. |
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Your vendors may not have tested the specific functions you rely on
In a mid-February 1999 discussion in the year2000-discuss@year2000.com
mailing list (see
Joining Mailing Lists for Peer-to-Peer Y2K Help
for further information about this list), a significant number of
consultants and in-house Y2K project managers and team members posted
messages declaring that
they had chosen to independently test mission-critical
commercial off-the-shelf
applications, rather than relying exclusively on vendors' compliance
statements.
One reason frequently cited was that very few vendors of off-the-shelf application programs have publicly provided details about exactly which program functions they have tested, over which system dates, and with what types of data. As a result, there can be no assurance that vendors have tested all of the key functions that you rely on within your own environment. |
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1. Identify your priority applications