Purdue News
Purdue News
"How to Defuse a Possible Year 2000 Explosion" will start at 9 a.m. in Room 104 of the Indiana Convention Center, said Ron Pirau of Alverno Consulting Services, one of the seminar sponsors. Purdue and TRS Consulting are the other sponsors.
The seminar will help participants understand the scope and implications of operating computers and programs that don't recognize dates in the next century. When programs for many mainframe computers were written decades ago, they recorded the year in all dates as a two-digit number, assuming it would be preceded by "19." That will cause problems for hundreds of thousands of computer programs after Dec. 31, 1999.
A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on government management, information and technology reported last summer that fixing the computer systems of the federal government alone could cost at least $30 billion.
About three and a half years ago, Purdue's management information department started to tackle the year 2000 dating problem that affected all the business-related mainframe programs at the university. At Purdue, that meant dealing with more than 100 subsystems, 13,000 programs and 7 million lines of programming code.
Purdue programmers developed a process that uses software to examine the COBOL programs, the most common language for business computer programs, and identify the sections of the computer code that need to be modified. A programmer then makes the changes to the code, but does not have to change any of the pre-existing data.
The solution developed at Purdue has been licensed to Venture 2000, Jacksonville, Fla. The process is for sale by Venture 2000 and other resellers including Alverno Consulting Services.
L.L. Knodle, executive director of management information at Purdue, and Bill Laker, vice president of Alverno Administrative Services, will present the keynote address that will focus on the liability issues that may face companies that don't address and resolve the issue before the December 1999 deadline.
"We are using Purdue's situation as a case study of how a large organization can approach the changes it will need to make in its information systems," Pirau said. "We also will highlight the timesaving techniques used in this solution and how other organizations can build their plans on this proven method."
For more information about the seminar or to reserve space, contact Alverno Consulting, (317) 783-9341, ext. 2000.
Sources: Ron Pirau, (317) 783-9341, ext. 6229; e-mail, rpirau@alverno.ssfhs.org
L.L. Knodle, (765) 494-4317; e-mail, llknodle@purdue.edu
Writer: J. Michael Willis, (765) 494-0371; e-mail, mike_willis@purdue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; e-mail, purduenews@purdue.edu
NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: Reporters and photographers are welcome to attend the seminar. Please contact Alverno Consulting, (317) 783-9341, ext. 2000.
