SmartStar® / Ideo™ Year 2000 Compliance

Many of our customers are inquiring about the compliance of SmartStar® and Ideo™ with 21st century dates. This paper will answer questions about how SmartStar® and Ideo™ handle dates, and what it means to customers as we move into the year 2000.

General:

SmartStar® and Ideo™ use the operating system date for the value of the "current" date. Therefore, the use of any of SmartStar® or Ideo's "current" date features will not encounter any problems in the 21st century.

Data Entry:

The key issue in compliance with the year 2000 is data entry. This includes how date field values are stored in the database and how they are displayed on the form. If the year is specified in 4 positions in SmartStar® ADFs and Ideo™ windows, there should be no problems moving into the year 2000. However, if years are displayed in 2 positions, then the dates need to be examined as to how they are stored in the physical database and how they are displayed on the form.

If the date values are stored using the RDBMS's "DATE" datatype (database vendors call this datatype different names), then there should be no problems retrieving the date values in the future. This is because the RDBMS stores the century as part of the date value. If, however, the dates are stored with 2-position-years in CHARACTER datatypes, then errors may be encountered in the future. This is because 2-position years in CHARACTER format are always stored without the century information and users may question whether a date was of the 20th or 21st centuries. For example, suppose "97" is stored for 1997. When this value is stored in CHARACTER data, it will be retrieved as "97". It will be unclear to the user, the application, and SmartStar® ADF or Ideo™ window whether this value means 1997 or 2097. If the application has traditionally entered dates with 2-position years in CHARACTER data, we advise expanding the data to a 4-position year field and migrating the data into the larger field, or converting the CHARACTER date field into a true "DATE" datatype and migrating the data accordingly.

If the editmask used by the SmartStar® ADF or Ideo™ window uses two positions for the "year" portion of the date instead of four positions (e.g. "YY" instead of "YYYY"), there is a potential problem in SmartQuery and Ideorun. Because a "YY" year editmask only contains the last two digits of the year, SmartQuery and Ideorun assume the current century. Therefore, if you retrieve a date value prior to the year 2000, such as "28-FEB-1998" from the database when the year on the computer is 2000, the form will correctly display "28-FEB-98". But, SmartQuery and Ideorun will assign the century of "20" and the date value on the screen internally will be calculated by SmartQuery and Ideorun as "28-FEB-2098". If the user then updates the record, the date field value will be updated in the database to be "28-FEB-2098". The user may not realize that such a change has occurred since the screen display will still appear correct. This is especially important to recognize in SmartStar® because SmartQuery will update every field defined for a table on an ADF, not only those that the user has physically changed. Ideo, however, only updates the fields on the window that the user physically changed. Therefore, the date issue will occur only when the user changes the date field on the window. If you have traditionally entered dates using the "YY" editmask, we advise expanding the editmask to "YYYY".

In the event that changing to a "YYYY" editmask is not feasible, SmartStar® and Ideo™ have an optional built-in algorithm that may be use when entering dates with 2-position years when the data is stored in a true DATE datatype. The method is called Rounded Century and is implemented by using the 'RR' edit mask which is documented in SmartStar's SmartDesign manual and Ideo's Object and Language Reference manual. The edit mask affects data entry and sets the century portion of a date value to the century nearest the current year. For example, if the current year is 1997 and a user types "43" in a field with an edit mask of "RR", the date stored will be 2043, since 2043 is closer to the current year than 1943. If a user types "50" in this field, the date stored will be 1950.

B2Systems Technical Support staff can provide further assistance regarding these issues as part of your annual AIMS contract. Additionally, B2Systems offers consulting services for on-site implementation of this migration process.

Data Retrieval:

Considering data retrieval, please be advised that any date value stored before the year 2000 will be correctly retrieved after the year 2000. SmartStar® and Ideo™ do not change any values in the database upon retrieval.

Summary:

We hope that this document adequately addresses your concerns about the 21st century dates. We will be performing regression tests against Year 2000 dates on all supported platforms . In the unlikely event that changes are needed to be made to the SmartStar®/Ideo™ products in order to comply with the new century, they will be made in the most current release which will be made available to those customers with valid maintenance agreements. If you have further questions on this, please contact B2Systems Technical Support at 1-800-627-4038.

Regards,

Gerald Koldjeski
V.P. Sales & Mkg.
B2Systems, Inc

805-692-2222 Tel 805-964-4666 Fax