http://geniusone.com/blog/cobol/ Since two decades author and leadership consultant Frank Kanu helps top managers and executives to improve success ratios and productivity. Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:18:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.1 http://geniusone.com/blog/cobol/#comment-1787 The Mad Perseid Thu, 04 Aug 2005 13:06:37 +0000 http://geniusone.com/blog/cobol/#comment-1787 We don't have to wait eight thousand years. When all those companies spent countless millions, if not billions, fixing the Y2K problem, many of them took a shortcut, the easy way out. With a two-digit year date(YYMMDD), it is impossible to tell what century you're in, and that was at the core of the problem. The proper fix is to change your databases to a four-digit year date(CCYYMMDD), and adjust all the programming and user interfaces to match. Depending on how the original two-digit year date was stored, it would be easy or hard to implement this change. Many companies didn't. They simply created a formula that said if the year is above a threshold value(often 47), that's the 20th century, otherwise it's the 21st century. So, 570204(Febrary 4, '57) is 19570204, while 150507(May 7, '15) is 20150507. In other words, in less than 50 years, we're right back where we started.
With a two-digit year date(YYMMDD), it is impossible to tell what century you’re in, and that was at the core of the problem. The proper fix is to change your databases to a four-digit year date(CCYYMMDD), and adjust all the programming and user interfaces to match. Depending on how the original two-digit year date was stored, it would be easy or hard to implement this change.

Many companies didn’t. They simply created a formula that said if the year is above a threshold value(often 47), that’s the 20th century, otherwise it’s the 21st century. So, 570204(Febrary 4, ‘57) is 19570204, while 150507(May 7, ‘15) is 20150507. In other words, in less than 50 years, we’re right back where we started.
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