Year 2000 Program
y2000

ABI Tools: Year 2000 Software Tool


Download Year 2000 Application Binary Interface tool now!

To examine a software application for year 2000 compliance, you can search the application for possible date handling problems. This can be performed using Sun's application binary interface (ABI) tool. Sun's ABI tool offers automated identification of a program's executables and associated shared objects that may have date handling errors. Source code is not required as the ABI tool runs directly on an application's executable and shared objects.

Originally used to confirm Solaris release-to-release compatibility, this tool has been extended to examine interface dependencies including those related to date handling and the year 2000. The approach is to examine application binary object interface dependencies and to verify calls to services that are consistent with future releases of Solaris.

By using the ABI tool on existing applications, developers and users will be better able to identify separate software components with the tendency to fail due to date handling inconsistencies. Once a date related manipulation component has been identified as more failure prone, a higher level of scrutiny of the component - possibly an inspection of source code - can be performed.

How to use the ABI tools for year 2000 compatibility testing:

There are three phases for testing of application binary code.

Phase 1 (Simple "contact-point" checking):

  1. Identification of the date-related interfaces of interest (at the ABI level).
  2. Application of the ABI profiling (interface dependency) tool to gather application interface-usage data. This requires only "seconds" per application to run.
  3. Use the ABI dependency tool to search application profile data and find binaries that depend on time and date related interfaces.
  4. Analysis of source code for modules that indicate date dependency.

Phase 2 (Runtime and/or semantic analysis)

    Write behavioral specifications for date-related interfaces 3. Use ABI tool's runtime semantic checker.

Phase 3 (Human Analysis)

  1. Final determination of year 2000 date handling problems and corrections (human examination)


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