- Oct 3, 2018
- 2,950
| TYPE | Research & Development |
| COUNTRY | South Korea |
| PROJECT | Y2K Bug Solution Exploration and Prevention Program |
| PROJECT COST | 75,000,000.00 |
| COMPLETION DATE | 09/12/2021 |
| PROJECT INFORMATION | Brought to the attention of Korea, the Y2K Bug has been addressed as an important global phenomenon that could affect the Republic of Korea and its digital infrastructure. The Year 2000 problem, also known as the Y2K problem, Millennium bug, Y2K bug, Y2K glitch or Y2K error, refers to expected computer errors related to the formatting and storage of calendar data for dates in and after the year 2000. Many programs represented four-digit years with only the final two digits, making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900. Computer systems' inability to distinguish dates correctly had the potential to bring down worldwide infrastructures for industries ranging from banking to air travel. The goal of the Exploration and Prevention Program is to pre-emptively address the crisis. Computer programmers and information technology experts will be brought together in Seoul to begin exploration before presenting their findings to an ASEAN+ Council to roll out an Association-wide response. The following proposals will be explored. Date expansion This plan will see two-digit years being expanded to include the century (becoming four-digit years) in programs, files, and databases. Date windowing In this plan, thetwo-digit years will be retained, and programs determined the century value only when needed for particular functions, such as date comparisons and calculations. This technique, which required installing small patches of code into programs, was simpler to test and implement than date expansion, thus much less costly. This was thought acceptable, as older legacy systems tend to eventually get replaced by newer technology. Date compression Under this plan, dates can be compressed into binary 14-bit numbers. This allows retention of data structure alignment, using an integer value for years. Such a scheme is capable of representing 16384 different years; the exact scheme varies by the selection of epoch. Date re-partitioning This plan will see how legacy databases whose size could not be economically changed, six-digit year/month/day codes can be converted to three-digit years (with 1999 represented as 099 and 2001 represented as 101, etc.) and three-digit days. This delays the eventual roll-over problem to the end of the year 2899. |
| PRIVATE / ENCRYPTED | No |
