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>>Just because your CARD has a two digit date doesn't mean that it is stored
that way on the First USA system.<<
And? Was there a point you wanted to make?
If the date WERE stored internally in 4 digit form, how do you suppose they
determine the century digits on incoming data? Is that 1901 or 2001?
Remember we are talking about computer programs, not people. The program
only knows how to follow its instruction sequence. Outside of experimenting
with neural nets and artificial intelligence, the standard program code is
straight forward. If I get this then I do this, else I do this. If I do
this and then do this, then I go here to do something else. Otherwise I go
there, etc. That's where windowing comes in (see original post).
If the input (the card date in this example) is only a two digit year, then
some program code has to be run somewhere up the line to change that into a
4 digit date to do computations (for example: How long has this person been
a card holder? You probably need 4 digits to do this calculation). This is
probably OK for credit cards since CC's haven't been around all that long.
But birth dates run into a problem, obviously. Then of course, there is
also the problem with history data. If you use 4 digit dates and your
history data is 2 digits, then you have to do a conversion. If you stick
with 2 digit dates and do conversions always, then you need different
windowing break dates for different applications. It can get much more
complicated than the neophyte understands. IMO, windowing is a short-term
solution that will cause further problems down the road. We probably will
be still fixing these type of Y2K problems in 2004!
JW
abprosys@xxxxxxx <mailto:abprosys@xxxxxxx>
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-realtraders@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-realtraders@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Richard
Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 1998 10:52 PM
To: RealTraders Discussion Group
Subject: RE: Y2K impact?
>>>All credit card processors are now Y2K compliant<<
>
>Don't know about that <g>. Just got a new VISA card from First USA. The
>expiration date on the card is 07/01. Also have an AT&T MC card. That
date
>is 09/01. 2 digit year dates are NOT Y2K compliant.
Just because your CARD has a two digit date doesn't mean that it is stored
that way on the First USA system.
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