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Year 2000 Compliance
Quality Window and their related programs,
are Year 2000 compliant according to widely recognized and accepted industry standards.
Specifically, the Version 4.5 releases of QW and QWDDE employ the "Year 50 Rule" as the method
for ensuring that dates past the Year 2000 are handled correctly. This method looks at a
two-digit year system. When a user enters
a two-digit year: 00-49 is interpreted as 2000-2049, and 50-99 is interpreted as 1950-1999.
For example: 12/31/98 = Dec. 31, 1998 and 12/31/03 = Dec. 31, 2003.
Internally QW and QWDDE will continue to use a two digit year to record a date while using the
method above to ensure that data can be accepted, processed, sorted, displayed and reported in
the correct sequential date order. The transition into Year 2000 will occur without any
required intervention from the user. No date related failures or error messages will
occur.
Externally QW and QWDDE will provide for a 4 digit year (example 2001) for all data interfacing
requirements. This will include the exporting of data from a QW data file to external formats
such as comma separated (CSV), Lotus or Excel® and dBase file formats as well as the
QW Input/Output and Transaction Log formats. QW will also accept a 4 digit year as-is OR a 2 digit year
through the Import option of QWUTIL using the above mentioned "Year 50 Rule"
Quality Window and QWDDE do not create dates automatically but accept them from either manual
entry, or from another process such as an Operating System Date and Time as well as through
Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) compliant processes. QW nor QWDDE verify the dates received other than
ensuring they are added to the data files in the proper
sequential date order. As such, date related issues such as leap years become moot.
Quality Window 4.5 and QWDDE 4.5's ability to handle dates beyond 2000 were vigorously tested using a sizable
testbed of data, including multi-site customer participation. Resulting screens, reports and
data files were found to be in compliance with all established system performance parameters.
Updrade Your Software
All versions of Quality Window and QWDDE prior to the Versions 4.5 release are not considered to
be Year 2000 compliant and should be upgraded to the latest version to ensure compliance.
QWPLC is not Year 2000 compliant and no Year 2000 compliant version will be offered. This product, though
still supported, was replaced with QWDDE in 1996. Current users should migrate to QWDDE to ensure
compliance.
An upgrade from any previous version of Quality Window
or QWDDE to Version 4.5 is readily available and simple to install. Version 4.5 also offers a number of other
exciting features and enhancements, and with a low cost to upgrade ($99 USD), we urge all Quality
Window users to ensure that they have the latest version.
For future versions of Quality Window we plan to change to a four digit year system.
However, the current implementation should not
cause any significant practical problems since there is no current need to
enter transactions with dates before 1950.
The descriptions above are provided as a convenience for our customers, and
are subject to, and are not intended to supplement or modify, the Quality Window
or QWDDE software license agreements between Busitech and the customer for the applicable
product.
If you have any more questions or need further explanation of any of these
points, please do not hesitate to contact us directly.
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