Summary of Vendor Compliance
Information Builders is only certifying mainframe versions 7.06 as Year 2000 compliant.  Support for earlier versions is being withdrawn. With the exception of User written Subroutines and MAINTAIN , which are not working.
 However 7.0.8 with the PTF's  do  work.

                                                Version specific problems

'Smart' dates or 'New format' dates have been built into Focus for several years.  These are identified by field formats such as TEMPDATE/YMD, as opposed to TEMPDATE/A6YMD.  The secret to their operation is that the date is stored internally as the difference between the date entered and December 31, 1900.  In other words, 12/31/99 is stored as 36159, the number of days from 1/1/1901 to the end of the century.  An earlier date such as 1/1/1900 is stored as -364.

Starting with Focus version 7.06, there are two new SET options, DEFCENT (Default Century) and YRTHRESH (Year Threshold).  These were created to ease the burden of rewriting programs with 2-digit years.  If DEFCENT is 19, and YRTHRESH is 50, then two-digit years less than 50 are considered to have a '20' in front.  Years from 50 through 99 have a '19' in front.

Important!!: If you have six digit dates in your database that were entered  before release 7.0.6, they will have been stored as 20th century dates, not 21st century dates.  This means that the same program could behave differently between versions.

For example, assuming you have a date field formatted as MDY, and a data entry screen as follows:

MAIN123                  Main Menu                        04/17/97
 

Please enter the year (MMDDYY): 010100
 

PF3: Exit, ENTER=Process

In versions 6.8 and before, the date entered above would be interpreted as 1/1/1900, and stored internally as -364.  In version 7.0.6, without setting YRTHRESH, it would be the same.  But, if YRTHRESH is set to 50, it is then interpreted as 1/1/2000, and stored internally as +36160.
 

Where to get help
   You  can subscribe  to the FOCUS Discussion listserver it by  sending a mail to  
                         listproc@lists.indstate.edu
  With   subscribe  focus-l in the  body of the message.
The questions asked in the Focus discussion list  are also archived at findmail 

   Tool  vendors :-
                         Pinnacle  Decision  System’s  PINNPOINT.
                      “  PinnPoint  (TM)  : The  Year  2000 Tool for Focus “  .

Information Builders, Inc. (IBI)
IBI is the vendor for Focus, and maintains a help desk at 1-800-736-6130, and a Web site at www.ibi.com

Please send me  your  experiences involving the y2k conversion effort.
These  could be  any TIPS  and/or  TRICKS,  and also  any additions  you would like to
recomend. I have included a  Y2K-FAQ document also. It  involves a list of  questions  pertaining to Y2K conversion, which I gleaned  and compiled from the  FOCUS discussion list.

 Thanks and  looking forward  to your continued contribution.  Help me realise
 the vision of  putting together a  complete  documentation on Y2K issues.
 
                                              Sudarshana  Ramakrishnan
                                
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