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| <title>U.S. DOT - Y2K Transportation Sector - The Problems</title> | |
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| <a NAME="Top"> </a> | |
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| <font FACE="trebuchet ms, arial, helvetica" SIZE="1"><b><a HREF="TextOnly/">Home</a> :</b></font> | |
| <font FACE="trebuchet ms, arial, helvetica" SIZE="2"><b><u>The Problems</u></b></font> | |
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| <font FACE="Times New Roman">Skip to <a HREF="Solutions.asp?Site=Text">The Solutions</a> Page</font> | |
| <h3>The Problems</h3> | |
| <blockquote> | |
| <p><font FACE="Times New Roman">At 12:01 A.M. on January 1, 2000, many computer systems worldwide will | |
| malfunction or produce incorrect information because of a simple date change anomaly. | |
| The Year 2000 problem, as it is called, results from the way computer systems store and manipulate dates. | |
| <br> | |
| <br> | |
| Dates are often used as part of a computer-based system's algorithm or decision process. | |
| For efficiency and to economize storage space, most computer manufacturers and computer program | |
| designers omitted the first two digits of the year (i.e., the century) | |
| when they referred to dates in computer programs. Therefore, when the date rolls over from 1999 (99) to 2000 (00), | |
| many computer programs will fail to recognize the change in the century and misread "00" (the year 2000), | |
| as 1900 instead. | |
| <br> | |
| <br> | |
| As the year 2000 approaches, the date roll-over problems associated with various computer systems become more apparent. | |
| These problems include the following:</font></p> | |
| <ul> | |
| <li><font FACE="Times New Roman">Inability of sort routines to perform properly</font></li> | |
| <li><font FACE="Times New Roman">Reversal of logic decisions</font></li> | |
| <li><font FACE="Times New Roman">Inability to continue forecasting for shelf life items</font></li> | |
| <li><font FACE="Times New Roman">Inability of inventory systems to generate correct stock | |
| level reports for reordering </font></li> | |
| <li><font FACE="Times New Roman">Failure of commercial products to function</font></li> | |
| <li><font FACE="Times New Roman">Inversion of security access rules</font></li> | |
| <li><font FACE="Times New Roman">Inability to properly validate intelligence data</font></li> | |
| </ul> | |
| <p><font FACE="Times New Roman">The types of systems that will be affected include mainframes, | |
| client/servers, networks, workstations, distributed systems, telecommunications systems, radar processors, | |
| and communication processors. The software that is potentially impacted includes both application | |
| software and system software. Databases and files which store two-position year fields will also be affected. | |
| <br> | |
| <br> | |
| There are three other date-related issues that compound the problem: | |
| </font></p> | |
| <ul> | |
| <li><font FACE="Times New Roman">Many of the systems developed fail to take into account | |
| that the year 2000 is a leap year</font></li> | |
| <li><font FACE="Times New Roman">Many of those same systems have associated values with date | |
| fields or they have hard-coded values in the software</font></li> | |
| <li><font FACE="Times New Roman">Many systems that use dates typically define and use a date | |
| data type which, due to its dependence on storage structures of the computer systems, will | |
| roll-over and fail</font></li> | |
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| <FONT SIZE=2><A HREF="AboutSector.asp">About the Sector</A> | </FONT> | |
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