STL Time Machine Report #11 - Mon 23 March 1998 (1998-03-23) I'm pretty much out of the loop now on Time Machine testing. But I did talk to one of our contractors. His application is now in testing, so I asked him how it was going. They're scrambling to build the test jobs and job schedules. They spent a couple of months writing test plans and now they're shaking out the setup problems while the Time Machine is running current dates. They start their "dry run" testing with future dates tomorrow (1998-03-24). It sounds to me like they're having an easier time, but they're in the second wave, and the Time machine is already built. They have relatively more batch and less CICS online to worry about. They will be testing the beta release of the third party database with LE/MVS in batch and in CICS 4.1 This application is interesting because it's the only one of ours I'm aware of that normally processes dates several years in the future. When this application was built in 1994, they had to support dates past 2000, and they did it with two-digit years. They had to extend their date-windowing end date from 2025 to 2049. Group 2 testing should take about two months, similar to what I went through. Group 3 is already working on their test plans and attending induction meetings. They should start around June 1, and they'll be testing with the Unix machines. My project leader had me review a walkthru checklist we'll be adding. It's intended to allow us to determine how much Year 2000 date testing will be required for any changes or enhancements to our applications that have already passed Time Machine Testing. On Wednesday, 11 March 1998, the St. Louis Y2K'ers met at Krieger's again. Tim Oxler, Daniel "Doc" Sewell, Steve Dover, and Eric Buckley had been drinking for a while before I got there. They had lite beer, I had bourbon & 7up. I switched to Coca-cola after the first drink. Several of us ordered the Bison Burgers, but not in deference to our Washashe (Osage) ancestors. Bison is trendy and lowfat. I told humorous stories of filing for Missouri State Senate in the upcoming election cycle. See http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1865/cands.html Steve Dover reported an interesting rumor. A local movie theater with 14 screens supposedly crashed all their cash registers for five hours due to a Y2K credit card problem a few weeks earlier. Steve hadn't been able to confirm the story, but if true, it would have been a very bad day for them. I haven't had any problems with my year 2000 credit card. One of the topics we discussed was the lack of information sharing from companies that should be working on the problem. Are they all frightened of legal liability? Eric Buckley had the most interesting observation that I've heard recently. He believes there will be a backlash against IT after 2000 because of all the supposedly mission-critical systems that truly aren't necessary. We're not talking about embedded systems or utility infrastructures here, we're talking about the big reports that land on somebody's desk. That one really made me stop and think. I know we run batch reports that nobody reads, but somebody complains if that pile of dirty paper isn't kicked out on schedule. I can't count the number of obsolete jobs/reports that still run or were finally canceled years after their usefulness had ended. Eric's point was that when the problems get severe some jobs will be abandoned for a long time. Our customers may wonder why they spent so much money on useless information technology. Anyway, Eric's back to programming, so he's having more fun now. Steve, Doc, and Eric traded Java/C++ horror stories. Tim Oxler shared some jokes from his huge backlog. He is going to give a Y2K talk to a business group for some friends of mine. Anyway, a good time was had by all. If you saw my posting a few days ago, the local electric utility, AmerenUE, issued their annual report. Total operating revenue is $3.3 billion (that's U.S.-sytle $3,326 million). Net income is $334 million. They expect to spend $10 million to $15 million on their Y2K problems. I dunno, sounds a little low to me. The March, 1998, issue of Enterprise Systems Journal (formerly Mainframe Journal) has an interesting article that summarizes some legal research on how to pick a site for trying a Y2K lawsuit, and how to pick sympathetic jurors. If you can get a copy of it, the article is titled "Juries in the Year 2000" by Warren S. Reid. They have a website, but I think it requires registration. Try http://www.esj.com I don't know if there's a fee. From another article in the same issue, "Year 2000 Conversion Services at John Deere", Steve Jost suggests that it's too late to start with an impact assessment, because first quarter 1998 is already gone. It's time to start triage. Sunday I actually saw the shrink-wrapped GMT-2000 program in my local CompUSA store for $49.95. The box said they fix your BIOS problem and also test rollover to 9/9/99 in addition to the typical dates. Maybe this one has already been mentioned in comp.software.year-2000. Previous issues of the STL Time Machine Reports can be found at: http://home.att.net/~arnold.trembley/tmr.htm It may be a couple of days before I get this one added to the web page. STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I am NOT an official corporate spokesperson. My opinions should not be held against my benevolent employer. -- Arnold Trembley http://home.att.net/~arnold.trembley/ "Y2K? Because Centuries Happen!"