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Year 2000 compliance - the ability of computer software to recognise the year change from 1999 to 2000 and to treat 1/1/00 as a higher number than 31/12/99 - is an issue of considerable concern to technical software users.
We have no wish to add to the millions of words that have been written on this subject. We do, however, want to address the issue as it affects the software we supply and support, and to assure our customers that the software they buy from us meets their corporate Year 2000 requirements and will not cause problems as we approach the turn of the millennium. We have therefore asked all our suppliers to examine their products for Year 2000 conformity, and have built a database of Year 2000 information relevant to technical computer users.
Date information is not critical to the vast majority of scientific and technical applications. Much of it does not use dates at all and is therefore unaffected by the century-end date change. Other programs "date stamp" information using the computer's internal clock and the date settings specified by the operating system; it is unlikely that, by the year 2000, any of us will still be using old versions of Windows, DOS, MacOS or other common operating systems that have not been updated to cope with the problem.
In the UK, the British Standards Institution has drawn up, in consultation with a number of leading corporations and agencies, a Definition of Year 2000 Conformity Requirements for computer software (DOSC PD2000-1). In summary, this definition requires that neither performance nor functionality is affected by dates prior to, during and after the year 2000.
1. In particular, No value for current date will cause any interruption in operation.
2. Date based functionality must behave consistently for dates prior to, during and after year 2000
3. In all interfaces and data storage, the century in any date must be specified either explicitly or by unambiguous algorithms or inferencing rules
4. Year 2000 must be recognised as a leap year.
We at Adept Scientific believe these guidelines effectively address concerns about Year 2000, and we have asked the suppliers and developers of all software we sell to provide a statement and guarantee of compliance accordingly. These are listed here; just click on the relevant links in the list to the left to see the manufacturer's compliance statement.
These statements of compliance are provided by the developers and/or manufacturers of the products referred to, and are accepted by us in good faith as authoritative. Adept Scientific accepts no responsibility for their accuracy, though to the best of our belief these statements may be relied upon by users of the software to guarantee Year 2000 conformity.
We will be pleased to answer any questions you may have about Year 2000 issues as they affect products supplied by Adept Scientific. We will also, to the best of our ability, attempt to answer your questions of Year 2000 conformity of any scientific or technical computing products. |