Pedagoguery Software's Year 2000 Software Audit (Y2KSA) which scans your computer's hard drive's software files for Y2K readiness, has been upgraded to version 1.34. Year 2000 Software Audit (Y2KSA) checks your applications, control panels, extensions, libraries, shared libraries, dynamic libraries, drivers, and other file types that include computer code to make sure that they are Y2K compatible.

Each time you use Y2KSA, a report is generated that breaks down your inventory of software files based on their readiness for year 2000. Y2KSA bases its decisions on a built-in database, which lists software files along with pertinent information such as: year 2000 readiness, affiliated products, web pages, and email addresses. The people and organizations that produce software files provide Pedagoguery Software with the information about their files.

A trial version of Y2KSA is available, and you may download a copy to test out yourself, on your machine from Pedagoguery's Y2KSA Webpage . Both Macintosh and Windows versions are currently available. Unregistered versions will scan at most one thousand files at a time. Registration removes this limitation, and covers all future upgrades, which will include larger software databases as manufacturer's inform us about their files.

According to Pedagoguery, while the Mac OS provides year 2000 compliant date routines, by using the provided date routines, an application is not necesarily immune from the year 2000 problem. In fact, by following older documentation, which incorrectly describes the provided date routine "StringToDate", programmers may unknowingly produce Macintosh software that has year 2000 problems. (Current documentation does correctly describe the "StringToDate" routine.) In some situations, the provided routines do not help since year 2000 problems arise due to externally imposed constraints: for example, some Macintosh software for processing forms are not year 2000 compliant because the forms they process do not allow for dates in the coming century. Similarly, some inter-application protocols were not designed with year 2000 compliance in mind.

Some Macintosh applications do not rely on the provided date routines. There are sound reasons for using proprietary date routines: cross-platform software uses them to minimize operating system dependencies, simple software uses them to avoid the complexity of the provided routines, and specialized software uses them to handle larger ranges of dates. Unfortunately, by implementing custom date routines, some software developers have introduced year 2000 problems into their software.

Pedagoguery says that Macintosh programs that are not ready span the spectrum of available software and include software from all of the following categories:

Automated Form Software
Business Graphing and Charting
Circuit Layout Software
Databases
Email Clients
File Servers
Groupware
Medical Software
Network Administration
Software Auditing
Software License Management
(Application Access Control)
Software Metering
Spreadsheets
Pharmaceutical Software
Presentation Software
Test Generation Software
Terminal Emulation
Online Banking
Online Help Software
Usenet News Readers
Web Browers
Windows Emulation
Word Processors

To date, the Y2KSA database contains information on over 1,500 different pieces of software. 4% of the applications in the database have some Y2K issues. Even some widely used Macintosh software released as recently as last year (1998) are not Y2K compliant. Pedagoguery Software has been working with hundreds of Macintosh software companies to keep the included database up-to-date.

One-machine licenses for Y2KSA cost US$38; multiple-machine licenses are also available. Prices may change without notice; see the Pedagoguery Web site for pricing and more information.

For more information, contact: peda@peda.com

Charles W. Moore

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February 08, 2012