New software scours code for hidden Y2K bugs
Year 2000 tool maker Data Integrity unveils a product to help companies make sure every bug gets cleaned from computer code that has already been reviewed.
The company's product, Millennium Contingency, is a combination of software
tools and training programs that allow a user to review previously
corrected and tested software to find any remaining code that could be
corrupt.
A growing number of companies that already have gone through the process of updating their systems have found additional year 2000-related problems when reviewing computer code, according to analysts. One of Data Integrity's products, Millennium CrossCheck, is able to find lingering bugs in tested code that may have been missed by previous sweeps, the company said.
"Most of our customers have gone back and found errors, contradicting what they have learned in formal testing," Meta Group analyst Rich Evans said.
Conventional tools search among an infinite number of variable names for date functions that may include year 2000-problems. The Y2K bug is a design flaw that may lead computers that read only the last two digits of a year to mistake the year 2000 for 1900.
Data Integrity software looks at specific computer language dealing with dates, not just variables specified by programmers, the company said.
"On average we find 100 misses per million lines of code," president Allen Burgess said. "Some companies are more, some are less, but any variable not found can cause problems."
Evans said in most cases testing programs have only touched about 20 percent of computer code, so a majority of previously tested code has not been truly reviewed, Burgess said.
"So there really is a false sense of security in our opinion," he said.
The Millennium Contingency package is priced at $9,500. At that price, the company will conduct an initial test on 200,000 lines of code, and includes one day of training.