Apex II� Communications Cradle
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.
At present, the Apex operating system correctly
represents all dates between the year 1984 and 2083, including
leap years. The operating system currently uses two digits to
represent this year range. A year from 00 to 83 is interpreted
as the next century. For example, 83/1/1 is interpreted by the
Day system variable to be January 1, 2083. In order to maintain
program compatibility and provide the customer date format selection,
Compsee has added the following enhancements to our hardware
and software products.
Apex II Operating System Enhancements
The Apex II Operating System has been enhanced
to provide four digit dates. The Sysparms statement has been
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. This new capability is available
in version 2.11b and version 1.28a or higher.
Program Generator Enhancements
The Program Generator, version 3.0 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:
