DDD Letter #61

Year 2000 Project - Survey Letter

Reformatted: July 7, 1997

As the Computer Center continues its efforts to insure that all hardware and software within its purvue are Year2000-compliant, we also do not want to neglect the greater university community which has both hardware and software for which the Computer Center is not directly responsible.

As first steps in assisting faculty and staff, we formed a discussion list (YR2000-L) and created a web page (http://vm.uconn.edu/~year2000/uccyr2k.html) to disseminate information and to keep you informed as to what we are doing. In addition to general information on the Year 2000, the web pages contain vendor compliance statements and inventories of PC and mid-range hardware and software compliance information.

Our next step is to see how we can assist faculty and staff with non-vendor supported software. In order to proceed we should inventory the software for which source code is available, that has been written by faculty and staff (or their friends, colleagues or students) and therefore is not supported by a vendor.

In considering your locally developed applications, you might wish to ask yourself (and your faculty and staff) the following questions for each application:

1. Does the software contain or use date-related information?
   • If the answer is 'no', no further action is required.
2. Is the software Y2K ready (i.e., does it store years as 4 digits, including century?)
   • If the answer is 'yes', no further action is required.
3. Do you plan to retire this software prior to Jan. 1, 2000?
   • If the answer is 'yes', then no further action is required.
   • If the answer is 'no', do you have a plan for replacing or revising the current software?

Please remember that in addition to checking the Y2K status of your application, you must also check the status of the language/database used.

If you would like us to assist you in reviewing your technology mix, please fill out the software inventory form available through the web at http://vm.uconn.edu/~year2000/facsurv.html. On the form please include all platforms (e.g., mainframe, PC, MAC and UNIX) as well as all programming languages, including (but not limited to) execs, FOCUS, SAS, Fortran, C, C++, Pascal, Basic, bat files, and shell programs.

Once we have received the inventories from you, we will report back to you on the results and how we may be able to help.