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THE MILLENNIUM BUG It would probably be an intrusionupon the respectable thoughts of many professional's in the Information Technology(IT) Industry by forcing them to admit that there are several computer jargons which remain superficial upon their minds, more so, upon the minds of many users and hobbyists. Some people, feeling the wave of technology, are virtually deprived of the actual world of computing. Thus, they think of each "jargon" as a hidden agenda designed to undermine the unsuspecting minds of ordinary individual who prefer tolive in an unadulterated world free from the kaleidscopic throb of electronic waves. For instance, "The Millennium Bug" is a jargon which IT people are familiar with. But when asked what and why it means that way, some simply are lacking in words. This "Millenium Bug" if taken literally from the minds of non-computer enthusiasts would surely lead to different interpretations. In other words, it is susceptible to different or even awkward translations of its meaning -- an insect that lives for a century or perhaps, another character in a cartoon series wearing golden breastplates. But what is a "Millenium Bug"? Is it as harmful and dangerous as computer virus? No, it is not. However, it is a worse than any virus ever made by any of the industry's hi-tech perpetrators. "Millenium Bug" is an error committed by designers of hardware and softeare in the past that became evident only in the early part of the 80's. Of the computers, mainframes are the most affected by this error.Today's mainframe computers are patterned from its older versions that dominate the world of computing in the late 50's. Though modifications have been made on these machines, most of the software they used in the past are still utilized today. Past designers never had in mind the turn of the century and this what they failed to foresee and this is what the Industry has to face today. In the early 50's, computer designers only focused their creation on computing power measured in terms of speed at runtime, the storage it could contain and the volumes of data it can handle with great precision. These are all integrated in one big object called "hardware". Software, on the other hand simply followed the trend of hardware capabilities. That is, the bigger the storage capacity teh better the programs could float and sail at high speed at runtime. In other words, the software acclimated what the hardware could provide and hardware adapts what the software could deliver. One of the software compilers in the 50's in use today is COBOL (Common-Business-Oriented-Language). It was designed for business applications and to provide wide range of business systems solutions. Like any other programming languages. However, COBOL is found to have contained the problen known as Millennium Bug". To be exact, "Millenium Bug" is a system's date problem embedded on both hardware and software. The hardware's timer could handle only up to six(6) digits of the exact date in th format of "MMDDYY". The first two letters refer to Month, the next two to Day abd tge remaining to Year(e.g. 081898 means August 18,98). In this format, there never wasany allocation intended for the century. it assumes that all shall stood forever to the 20th century. The "YY" or year accumulated since late 50's until now when we have "98" when it means "1998". Most of the programs currently running under mainframe computers use the same format fo dte without the corresponding "19" prefixing the year. These programs contain all necessary validations on dates. similarly, all new transactions must conform to the current date. Data coming in are well recorded with the corresponding stamped-dates and the rule was,never accept data containing backward dates. Now here is the actual problem. by the trun of the century, the last two digits of the system date, which is the "YY" will be reset to "00" as when the date starts with "January 01,2000". Most of these computers and compilers do not carry a century. Thus, within the system a date could be "010100". It is crystal clear, that at the end of "1999" the year will be reset to "00". since most of the programs work onl within the limit that is equal to ro greter that the current date, all programs will bog down and refuse to accept transactions ending with a year "00". These means that loss of data and loss in business. Which means that "Millenniun Bug", the happening of which and the destruction it carries, could happen only at the end of this century. True, this problem is countered through reprogramming. Most of the companies working on mainframe environments are doing all the necessary measures to prepare their machines and programs from the deep impact of 21st Century. But then all remains to be seen. |