Vendor Offers Free Screening for Millennium Bugs
Managers in smaller AS/400 shops may have trouble securing all the resources they need for Y2K remediation and testing. In fact, they may not even know how much Year 2000 exposure they actually have. That's why Antrix Corp. (Miami, Fla.) recently announced that it is putting its auditing utility, Data Auditor, out on the Web for free download.
The purpose of this offer is to help companies get the ball rolling on Y2K work, says Mike Manion, VP of sales and marketing with Antrix. In a survey conducted last year, almost 70% of U.S.-based AS/400 companies claimed they're ready for Y2K. A high percentage, until you consider that many respondents just may not be fully aware yet of their Y2K vulnerabilities, he explains. "We don't have very high confidence in that number. These people are kidding us, kidding themselves, or both. On follow-up, roughly half of them, four months later, said they needed more information." The situation is even more critical at AS/400 sites outside of the United States, he adds.
The tool being offered for free download, Data Auditor, generates audit reports on date fields scanned prior to testing. "This tool will give the MIS people four or five reports that show the number of compliant date fields, number of non-compliant date fields, and a summary report with the percentage of fields that are 'probably' compliant," says Manion.
Antrix maintains it can save companies up to $10,000 in testing costs with this free offering. "We're trying to help people get started. There's less than clear communication between many MIS departments and management," says Manion. "MIS people can take this management to show them where the problems are."
The solution and user's manual can be downloaded from Antrix's Web site (www.antrixcorp.com). The tool is one of three utilities that are part of Antrix's TestGear/2000 date-field scanner for AS/400 data. The other utilities include Data Extractor, which enables users to extract representative test data from live production environments. Test Coverage Auditor tracks source code and provides test audit logs and reports on source lines not executed in the testing process.