SUBJECT: Apex II¨ Year 2000 Product Compliance
COMMUNIQUE: 211
DATE: 03-19-98

As the year 2000 approaches, we at Compsee are taking proactive steps to ensure that you, the customer, can rest assured that our hardware and software products will be Year 2000 compliant. To achieve this compliance and maintain compatibility with all customer applications, we are providing our customers the choice of either two or four digit date formats. This approach will allow our customers to control how they want our products to report the date format. By providing the choice of date formats, no one will be forced into database structure changes or programming changes, unless it is their decision. Here is how we are able to offer this unique and simple solution to a potentially difficult problem.

Apex II Operating System Enhancements

A new parameter was added to the Apex II Operating System, (requires version 2.10 or higher). The Sysparms statement will be improved by adding a "Century Date" parameter. This added flexibility will allow the user to set the parameter to return either a two or four digit year date format. (YYYY/MM/DD or YY/MM/DD). e.g. 1997/06/30 or 97/06/30.

Program Generator Enhancements

The Program Generator, version 3.00 or higher allows for user selection of either two or four digit century date stamps.

How can you report a four digit year format on earlier versions of the Apex Operating System

A simple conditional statement can be added to existing programs to allow the application to determine the current century. The following line of code can be used to determine the current century:

IF DATE$(1:2) < "84" THEN CENTURY$ = "20" ELSE CENTURY$ = "19"

Here is a program example showing how to add the century identifier to the string returned by the DATE$ function:

IF DATE$(1:2) < "84" THEN CENTURY$ = "20" ELSE CENTURY$ = "19"
CENTDATE$ = CENTURY$ + DATE$

We are proud to be able to provide solutions that will continue to allow our customers the ability to control their applications. We feel this approach has distinguished Compsee's product from the rest of the pack.

If you have any questions or would like additional information, please contact either:
Your Compsee Sales Representative
Compsee's Technical Support Department at (800) 768-5248
Compsee's Customer Service Department at (800) 628-3888