I have been reading that there are 7 or 8 different techniques to make software Y2K compliant. As I understand it, "bridging" is a technique to allow two compliant systems to communicate with one another when each system used a different method to fix their Y2K problem. So my question is the following: What kind of bridging method would allow a "2-field year to 4-field year" corrected database be processed by another computer system which has maintained the original 2-field database and used "windowing" to avoid Y2K problems? It seems to me that the only way these different data bases could run in software which had a different "fix" is to read a special file "up front" which would then create the appropriate "read logic" to avoid trouble. For example, if a computer system that was fixed through windowing received a database containing a four-field year it would be instructed to subtract 1900 from each record to put the date back to its original form so the the software which relies on windowing can proceed with that type of correction. Windowing by definition, begs another type of question. Since the base year to interpret the 2-digit year as either the twentieth or twenty first century is arbitrary, the "special file" I referred to earlier would also need the pivot year for the windowing type of fix. Furthermore, the format itself of this special file would have to be standardized throughout the vast computerized network if the "non-unified Y2K fix" has any hope of working.

-- Anonymous, January 03, 1998