Can the new 64 bit O\S hold the answer?

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Can or will the new 64 bit operating systems being created by some of the mainframe\software companies be able to provide a viable work-around the Y2K embedded problem, at least temporarily until such time mainframe replacements can be installed?

-- Gary Allan Halonen (njarc@ica.net), December 30, 1997

Answers

Say what?!? Which new 64-bit operating systems are you talking about? Whatever they are, if they run on mainframes, then they have nothing to do with embedded systems -- so I don't see how they could possibly provide a work-around for the Y2K embedded problem.

Also, the notion of changing an operating system, in a mainframe environment running thousands of mission-critical legacy applications, is enough to strike fear and terror into the hearts of an operations manager. Unless the new operating system had EXACTLY the same interfaces (API's, etc.), it would require making lots of changes to the application programs, and then testing them, etc. It's highly unlikely that anyone would be interested in this option.

P.S. If these "new" 64-bit operating systems are "being created," how do we know they're reliable enough to run our 7-by-24 mission-critical applications? Let's save them for our PCs, where things already have a history of crashing several times a day.

-- Ed Yourdon (yourdon@sprintmail.com), December 30, 1997.


Also, changing the OS is not a silver bullet for fixing the code running on it. The business code is broke and no hardware or OS update can change that fact.

William

-- William Preston (william_preston@hotmail.com), December 30, 1997.


This recent release from Lucent technologies seems to be a help in solving the problem(or a small piece of it).Any thoughts or more info available on this?

LUCENT TURNS DATA INTO A VISUAL FEAST

SINCE BEING SPUN OFF FROM AT&T last year, Lucent Technologies Inc.,the former Bell Labs, has been prolific. On Dec. 8, Lucent announced its fifth business venture. Called Visual Insights, the wholly owned company,headquartered in Naperville, Ill., plans to market software programs that transform vast amounts of data into visual displays for easy analysis.

The software draws on years of Bell research and patents in computer graphics, statistics, human factors, and computer science. The company's first product uses data-visualization techniques to help with complex Year 2000 projects. All of a company's software programs are represented graphically, with lines showing relationships and colors signifying how crucial each is to operations. From there, a manager can drill down and look at individual programs--up to 100,000 lines of programming code can be graphically displayed at once. Date-sensitive lines of code that need to be fixed are identified, speeding up project time. A visualization program aimed at managing networks is scheduled for release early next year.

-- Steve P. (kitp@pacbell.net), January 02, 1998.


If the Lucent Technology's new software won't be ready for release until early 1999, it might be too late. Many state, local, city, and business fiscal years start during the July to October time span, so they could well be experiencing y2k problems by the time this software begins readily available (and presumeably debugged). Thoughts?

-- Dennis Sherwood (emdesher@iconnect.net), January 05, 1998.

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