Summary

To the best of our knowledge, all Year 2000 bugs have been fixed in Applixware and Anyware versions 4.4 (1021.1.188) and 4.41 (1021.202). Note, however, version 4.37 and earlier releases are not Y2K compliant. For information regarding specific Y2K issues, please see Y2K Bugs.

Introduction

We at Applix are very aware of industry concerns with potential problems many software applications face with the upcoming turn of the century - the "Year 2000/Y2K" issue. We share these concerns.

The Applixware & Anyware product lines have been architected using 4 character years and/or 32-bit integer internal representation of dates, to generally avoid this type of problem. In all known cases today where the products do allow dates to be entered in a 2-digit format, they are automatically converted to a full 4-digit date for storage and calculation purposes.

The Applixware and Anyware product lines have been code-reviewed and tested for potential Y2K related issues. All problems found during this effort have been corrected in the context of the current, 4.4, product release (please see the What did Applix do? section below for more detailed information). If any potential Y2K issues in Applixware/Anyware make themselves apparent during customer testing or use, please report these issues to Applix Support as soon as possible. Every effort will be made to respond as quickly as possible to any Y2K problems that may arise.

What Does Y2K Compliance Mean at Applix?

Year 2000 compliance requires six main factors to be satisfied with respect to date processing:

1. Correctly handle date information before, during, and after 1st January 2000 - accepting date input, providing date output, and performing calculation on dates or portions of dates. Date manipulation in Applixware & Anyware will be accurate into the future, until at least the year 2037.
2. Function according to the documentation before, during and after 1st January 2000 without changes in operation resulting from the advent of the new century, assuming correct underlying system configuration.
3. Where appropriate, respond to two digit date input in a way that resolves the ambiguity as to century in a disclosed, defined, and pre-determined manner
4. Store and provide output of date information in ways that are unambiguous as to century.
5. Manage the leap year occurring in the year 2000, following the quad-centennial rule.
6. "99" or "00" may not be interpreted as a no-year "dummy" date. These potential "dummy" dates must be handled as if they were simple two-digit year representations.

What Did Applix Do?

Applix's Y2K effort used a three pronged, parallel strategy. The Applix Development group code reviewed all known date handling portions of the Applixware/Anyware products; Applix QA independently tested date handling features of the products in a number of scenarios; and Applix Development contacted various closely related third party developers for their Y2K statements and product strategies.

As of the writing of this white paper, all known Y2K related problems in the Applixware/Anyware product lines have been rectified. If you are concerned about Y2K related problems in your release of Applixware or Anyware Office, please read Y2K Bugs. This document outlines the issues identified by Applix and the release in which these issues were found and fixed.

What Should Customers Do?

All customers currently under a maintenance and support agreement with Applix should begin testing Applixware/Anyware 4.4 or later ASAP in their Y2K test environment. It is important that testing only be conducted with Y2K compliant versions of each of the relevant platforms' operating systems. Applixware & Anyware 4.4 will not ship simultaneously on all supported platforms; thus please check with your Applix representative or Applix Support regarding the availability of your particular platform.

Any potential Y2K issues that are found with Applixware/Anyware4.4 or later should be reported to Applix Support ASAP.

Any customer-built custom Builder- or ELF-based applications should be reviewed for date handling as well. If you would like to receive a copy of the Applixware or Anyware Office Y2K test plan, please contact Applix Customer Support.

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