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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