HP OpenVMS Systems

The Year 2000 problem results from an industry-wide practice of representing years with only two digits instead of four (for example, specifying 96 instead of 1996). This practice was widespread from the 1960s to the 1980s to save disk and memory space when these resources were relatively expensive. To compound the problem, many standards and programming guides promoted 2-digit year formats, and some common specifications, such as ANSI and DOD, also allowed 2-digit year formats.

When used, these 2-digit year representations can cause application problems during the transition to the year 2000 if the system interprets the year 00 as 1900 or interprets any 2-digit year (01, 02, and so forth) as a 1900s date. In fact, many applications in the industry have already encountered problems caused by 2-digit year formats. Some examples of problems currently posed by the 2-digit year method are:

• Bank cards expiring in the year 2000 have been denied transactions by ATMs that interpret 00 as a card that expired in 1900.

• Bank computers performing mortgage calculations can produce negative balances.

• Warehouses tracking date-sensitive inventory can misinterpret a 00 year field as inventory that is 97 years old.