Several weeks ago, Paul Milne issued a challenge on this forum, something to do with doubting that the largest corporations have a significant amount of remediated code back online and running. There may have been responses that I missed. It seems to me that this question represents a category of information that might be useful to the SEC, the Federal Reserve, and the general public, but I don't think it's required for 10Q filings. Anyone know any data on this question?

-- Bill Byars (billbyars@softwaresmith.com), August 01, 1999

Answers

Bill,

I did not see either Paul's "challenge" or any replies. I do not know of any way that such a "challenge" could be resolved one way or the other. I can say that most of the remediated code of the system on which I have been working has been online and running since before June.

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), August 01, 1999.

I think Cory has more or less made a separate category of y2k failures from this case -- remediated code that was slammed back online before it was ready. This has caused some of the more noteworthy errors, and sometimes organizations have had to revert to the older code once or twice before the remediated code really is ready for prime time. It would appear (no way to really tell) that almost all remediated code is being put back online. It's just so dangerous to leave it until the last minute and pray that even IT types of little experience can see this.

I think most of Cory's examples are in the public sector, which doesn't surprise me a bit.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), August 01, 1999.

I'd agree with Jerry. I don't pay attention to any of Milne's stuff, but at the sites where I've been involved with remediation, or seen remediation done by other teams, the effort was piecemeal as much as possible. Let's take the City of Fort Worth as an example. First the systems were broken down...Police System, Fire System, etc. THEN, phase I of remediation handled specifically the portions that were stand-alone. Stand-alone means that other systems aren't affected and that other programs aren't passed data from the system. Once stand-alone systems were completed, the systems were installed into production. Sometimes they worked without a hitch, and sometimes folks spent an entire day getting them to work without a hitch. Once the stand-alone systems were installed into production, the other portions of the system were installed...again in phases. Same deal here...sometimes they worked without a hitch and sometimes folks spent an entire day getting them to work.

Using this method of phasing, errors in systems are more easily identified. I've seen many sites use this method. They're all now running Y2k-compatible code in production.

-- Anita (spoonera@msn.com), August 01, 1999.