Year 2000 Program
y2000


Year 2000 Frequently Asked Questions


Anyone involved with computer systems and information technologies today is concerned about the impending arrival of January 1, 2000. This obvious concern spawns many questions about how Sun is addressing this much publicized issue. Presented here are answers to many of these most frequently asked questions.

What's Sun's official year 2000 position?

Sun's products are used to run many of the world's largest mission critical organizations. This involves working with information that is date sensitive. With this in mind Sun is partnering with our users, developers, and other interested parties to ensure that the century transition is smooth and uneventful. Sun appreciates that users are concerned about the hardware, operating system, network, and application software layers of their systems. Sun is committed to long term customer quality, support, and partnership.

Has Sun created any policies or standards to ensure that its products are year 2000 ready?

Yes! Before any product is released for sale, Sun product groups must adhere to very extensive product release procedures which are managed by independent Sun product release councils. Sun has established product release councils to stop a product group from skipping a part of the release procedure. These councils will not authorize the release of any new product after May 1, 1997 that is not year 2000 compliant.

What is your plan to ensure that future versions of Solaris are year 2000 compliant?

There are two ways to address the year 2000 issue. The first is to prevent problems in the product design phase and the second is to fix them after the product ships. Sun has chosen the first of these to prevent problems by incorporating year 2000 compliance checking into the source architecture review process at design and source code check-in time. This means that year 2000 compliance is "baked" into the product. In addition, Sun has also incorporated year 2000 test suites into Solaris product development and release processes. These test suites are part of a larger and more rigorous year 2000 test plan.

As a customer, I have standardized on a very early version of Solaris and don't want to upgrade at this time. Will Sun support me?

Sun is exceptionally committed to its customers and understands that products like the Solaris operating environment are cornerstones to a company's internal information technology strategy. In fact, many customers are using Sun products well beyond their anticipated life. An example of Sun's commitment is in the area of Solaris. Versions 1.1.1b, 1.1.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, and 2.5.1 are being tested and made year 2000 compliant. To ensure full year 2000 compliance, and where a break in compliance was detected, a patch or solution plan has been developed and is being distributed through our extensive support programs.

Should I worry that Solaris might be "End-of-Life'd" before year 2000?

No, Solaris is a leading operating system in today's computer industry and it provides the foundation for Sun's solution across multiple platforms. Every year Solaris' unit shipment volumes increase and with each release, Sun continues to invest significant resources in the areas of expanded features, functionality, quality, reliability, ease of use, and performance. Such an investment demonstrates an unwavering determination by Sun to keep Solaris one of the best operating systems in the industry. With each future release, Solaris will continue to raise the bar on its competitors.

Are Sun's hardware products able to successfully meet the new millennium?

Yes! The hardware itself is fully able to run past January 1, 2000 without experiencing any difficulties. Keep in mind that the hardware is only one technology layer needed to run an enterprise. Layered on top of the hardware there needs to be a year 2000 compliant Solaris and other year 2000 compliant software products.

Is there anything in any Sun BIOS that won't allow setting the system clock beyond year 2000?

No, there is no "BIOS" in SPARC systems. The SPARC system clock uses a 100 year window which began in 1970.

How can Sun be so confident about its date format?

Sun has always been a proponent for the open systems concept and makes every effort to follow industry standards. Some of these standards include year 2000 specifications. They include: X/Open's System Interface Definition Issue 5; X/Open's System Interfaces and Headers Issue 5; and X/Open's Commands and Utilities Issue 5. As a global provider of internationlized technology products, Sun is in tune with all the different date formats found throughout the world. With these different country customs in mind, the date formats produced by Sun products are selectable and dependent on the location in which a user is running a given program. Technical readers should be pleased that the LC_TIME locale definition (a combination of an environment variable and a locale definition item) defines the interpretation of the field descriptors used by the "date" utility and affects the behavior of the strftime(), wcsftime(), strptime() and nl_langinfo() functions.

How can a developer know if an application uses any Solaris date critical function?

By using Sun's application binary interface (ABI) tools for year 2000, a developer might quickly identify applications that access potentially ambiguous date related functions.

Does Sun see any problems with the source code control system (SCCS)?

No, Sun has adopted the X/Open Commands and Utilities Issue 5 standard, the year 2000 compliant version of SCCS will not be affected by the end of century transition. The X/Open standard states that old dates held in ("yy/mm/dd") format does not change in "s." files, but the values "yy" which range from 69 - 99 are to be interpreted as 1969 - 1999 respectively. Values of "yy" which range from 00 - 68 are to be interpreted as 2000 - 2068 respectively. This interpretation ensures that the year 2000 compliant version of SCCS will work at least to the year 2068. By implementing X/Open's standard, Sun has ensured SCCS user's compatibility with other providers of the SCCS utility. For more information please refer to: http://www.xopen.org/public/tech/base/year2000.html

What special help desk facilities have been provided to answer year 2000 related inquires?

Sun's year 2000 web page is the central focus for year 2000 related inquires. There we welcome your queries and comments. As new information becomes available, the web page is updated. In addition, SunService provides help desk facilities for any customer questions including those relating to year 2000.


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