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Faximum Software - Year 2000 Compliance Statement

http://www.faximum.com/year2000

Initially Issued: Fri Dec 12 13:53:56 PST 1997
Last Updated: Wed Jul 7 11:53:05 PDT 1999

Faximum Software bases its Year 2000 conformity testing on the definition promulgated by the British Standards Institute: DISC PD2000-1 A Definition of Year 2000 Conformity Requirements (for more information, please see http://www.bsi.org.uk/disc/year2000/2000.html).

THE DEFINITION

Year 2000 conformity shall mean that neither performance nor functionality is affected by dates prior to, during, and after the year 2000.

In particular:

Rule 1. No value for current date will cause any interruption in operation.

Rule 2. Date-based functionality must behave consistently for dates prior to, during, and after year 2000.

Rule 3. In all interfaces and data storage, the century in any date must be specified either explicitly or by unambiguous algorithms or inferencing rules.

Rule 4. Year 2000 must be recognized as a leap year.

General Preconditions

Since Faximum's software products are applications packages intended to run on computer systems controlled or managed by an operating system, the ability of Faximum's products (as with any applications package) to operate during and after the year 2000 (as defined above) is obviously dependent on the Year 2000 compliance of the underlying computer system.

If the underlying computer system is not Year 2000 compliant, then even if the application itself is otherwise Year 2000 compliant the operation of the application on that computer system may not be Year 2000 compliant.

Note also that while some companies provide information suggesting that their operating systems are Year 2000 compliant, they may not guarantee or warrant such claims.

General Information on Faximum Year 2000 Compliance

In order to better understand Faximum's Year 2000 Compliance Statement it will be helpful to identify those places within Faximum's software products where date information is used.

Internal Date Storage

Internally the Faximum fax scheduler maintains all dates in Posix IEEE 1003.1 format which encodes the century explicitly and so is Year 2000 compliant.

External Date Representation

When displaying the date in its user interface (for example, when displaying the date and time associated with system log entries or in the accounting log, Faximum uses 2-digits for the year. This is unambiguous and is Year 2000 compliant according to Rule 3 above.

The format of the files used to record the accounting and system logs differ between the ELS and PLUS product lines and the Client/Server products.

With the ELS and PLUS products, the date is recorded with a two-digit year by default. Therefore customer-written or provided software that processes such log files must properly interprete the two-digit year information. The Faximum ELS and PLUS products do not include any software that processes or interprets the log file and so this issue only arises when third-party or customer-supplied software is used to process the log files.

It is also possible to reconfigure the Faximum ELS and PLUS products to use a four-digit year in the log files. Contact Faximum Technical Support for details.

With the Client/Server products, the time and date is stored both in a human-readable form (that uses a two-digit year) and a machine-readable format (Posix IEEE 1003.1 time_t format) that is Year 2000 compliant. Users who are processing Client/Server log file must either properly interpret the two-digit year field or utilise the Posix time_t format date information.

All Faximum products can be configured to print the time the fax was transmitted at the top of every page that is sent. By default this uses a two-digit year representation but can be configured by the user to use four digits for the year.

Date Input

The Faximum ELS and PLUS products allow the user to specify in constrained English the date and time in the future when a fax is to be delivered. This input format allows both two-digit and four-digit year dates to be specified. Two-digit year information is always interpreted by the Faximum ELS and PLUS products as representing a year in the range 1900-1999. For this reason, users ought not to use two-digit year specifications.

Since most users do not schedule faxes by specifying the year, this is unlikely to be an issue.

Even if the year is improperly specified using only two digits after 1999, the software will still function and the faxes will be sent, the only problem is that faxes may be sent earlier than intended.

The Faximum Client/Server APIs only accept time in the Posix time_t format and so this issue does not arise.

General Information on Twenty-First Century Compliance

A more general question than Year 2000 compliance is Twenty-First Century compliance which, roughly stated, is the ability of computer systems/software to operate properly with all dates in the century (i.e. 2000 - 2099).

All of the UNIX-based operating systems that Faximum Software currently supports provide a 32-bit interface to the operating system. And all such systems use a signed 32-bit number to hold the date. This format can only handle dates up to early January 2038. Therefore all of the UNIX-based computer systems listed below, and the Faximum products that work on those systems, will fail to work properly sometime in early 2038.

Faximum Software intends to issue new versions of its products to handle the Year 2038 problem in sufficient time for its customers to migrate to Y2038-safe software.

Specific Information on Faximum Year 2000 Compliance

The following sections provide specific information on Year 2000 compliance for each Faximum product.

 
Platform Product Version Year 2000 Compliant Comments
HP-UX 9.x Client/Server All Probably HP has announced that HP-UX 9.x is not Year 2000 compliant and that fixes to make it so will not be available. With that said, preliminary tests suggest that Faximum Client/Server on HP-UX 9.x will continue to function since the defective APIs in HP-UX 9.x that are not Year 2000 compliant are not used by the Faximum software. That said, Faximum does not plan to issue fixes to address any Year 2000 problems that may arise on HP-UX 9.x platforms. HP recommends such customers upgrade to HP-UX 10.x.
HP-UX 10.x Client/Server All Yes Note that fixes are required from HP to make HP-UX 10.x (where x is less than 30) Year 2000 compliant. Faximum will probably work on unfixed systems since the fixes correct problems with HP-UX APIs that Faximum does not use.
IBM AIX/6000 PLUS 2.1 Probably Testing and research continues but early results suggest that the product is Year 2000 compliant.
IBM AIX/6000 PLUS 2.2x Yes Product is fully Y2K compliant.
Intel (SCO) ELS & PLUS 2.1 No Will probably work with appropriate fixes from SCO (see SCO Fix UOD426) including processing of Faximum executables using the SCO fix2000 utility, but not supported by Faximum. ELS & PLUS customers ought to upgrade to 2.2.
Microsoft Windows (3.x, 95, and NT 3.51, 4.0) Faximum Client all Probably Testing and research continues but early results suggest that the product is Year 2000 compliant.
SCO Open Server 5.x ELS & PLUS 2.2x Yes Note that SCO UNIX and Open Desktop systems may need fixes from SCO to be Year 2000 compliant.
Sun SPARC Solaris 2.x Client/Server All Yes Note that fixes are required from Sun to make Solaris 2.x (where x is less than 6) Year 2000 compliant. Faximum will probably work on unfixed systems except that displayed dates after February 28th, 2000, may not properly account for the leap year.

Other Year 2000 Resources on the Web

Legal Notice

Please understand that Faximum's assessment of its products, past or present, is an ongoing effort, and the information regarding Year 2000 compliance is changing rapidly and is dependent in part on sources beyond the control of Faximum Software. Therefore, Faximum cannot be responsible for the completeness of the information or its applicability to your organisation. The data provided may not be exhaustive, is intended for informational purposes only, and does not constitute a certification or warranty, expressed or implied of any kind.

 

 

 

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