©Springchase Ltd Design by Alnpete		Two missing digits that add up to big trouble Come midnight on 31st December 1999, 2-digit year fields will change from 99 to 00. Will your computer know whether 00 is 2000, 1900, or 2100? If the interest on a loan is automatically calculated by computer, when the year becomes 00 this could appear to the computer to require a payment of over 100 years' interest! What about historical data? Even if the computer program is changed to expand date fields to 4-digits, all the archived data will still be stored in 2-digit format, unrecognisable to the now Millennium compliant program. So everything has to be changed, or years of precious historical data become useless. Can you be sure you will identify all the fields that need to be changed? A programmer scanning through many lines of COBOL code is likely to miss key date fields. Although only a small proportion of code includes a date field, in the absence of any reliable electronic means, the programmer will have to read through every single line of code - just in case. Click on the lifebelt for the Lighthouse solution to your problem Some companies are projecting the programming effort in man years and costs in the millions. Where will you find the programmers needed to complete it in time? Much of the projected cost will not be a net rise in spending but opportunity cost - other projects cancelled or deferred to make room for this one. Even if the company survives the crisis - and it is reported many will not - it will have to begin again from scratch.