Benefits

SIMDATE saves time, money, and resources during the testing phase of a year 2000 conversion, by far the most time consuming and costly phase of the project.

Many studies estimate that the testing phase of a year 2000 conversion can consume up to 50% (and more) of the resources of the entire project. Usually, one of the most unproductive, time consuming, tasks in thorough testing is examining how programs perform when the system date is set to a date on or after January 1, 2000. Typically, a programmer must use a dedicated machine with no production jobs or other programmer testing going on. Then, the date is reset to the desired test date and the test is run. When testing is complete, someone must remember to reset the system date to the current date or all future production and other test jobs will run with the wrong date!! Imagine what a disaster that would be for your shop.

SIMDATE allows a programmer to easily and non-intrusively test with any date without impacting other testers, users, or production jobs. You never have to worry about forgetting to reset the date to the correct date.

SIMDATE avoids the need for a dedicated AS/400 for year 2000 testing.

Many shops have approached the year 2000 problem by acquiring costly, additional equipment which functions as a dedicated year 2000 testing machine. Because SIMDATE operates non-intrusively and can coexist with production jobs and other testing, it can alleviate the need to acquire or dedicate additional hardware.

Since the system date is never changed, SIMDATE allows testing without impacting production applications or systems.

Production applications remain safe because programmers can be prevented from tampering with the system date. All testing is easily accomplished by individual programmers using the SIMDATE command which impacts only their job and does not interfere with production jobs or other testing or development.

Multiple programmers can test their programs or applications using different virtual system dates at the same time. One tester can be using December 31, 1999 while another is using February 29, 2000 or any other date. Programmers can evaluate system performance at simulated month end, quarter end, and year end processing periods.

Each SIMDATE job operates within its own date intercept environment independently of other SIMDATE jobs as well as production jobs. This faciliates extensive testing by individual programmers on a wide variety of dates without having to worry about impact on production systems, users, or other developers. Programs can be tested at their natural processing dates so that month end programs, for example, are tested with a simulated month end date.

No source code is required. SIMDATE allows testing testing on vendor supplied code for which no source is available.

SIMDATE allows you to verify that your vendor supplied packages really are year 2000, as claimed by the vendor. Packages may be tested at a variety of dates, including February 29, 2000. SIMDATE facilitates review of canned reports and displays to assure that year 2000 compliance has been achieved.

SIMDATE does not require access to restricted system commands such as CHGSYSLIBL or CHGSYSVAL.

Other products require that programmers be given access to restricted commands which could impact other users and cause security problems. SIMDATE requires no such authorizations. No OS/400 components are modified.

SIMDATE is easy to use and comes complete with free technical support and free upgrades until the year 2000.

If you have any questions now, at the time of installation, or while using the product, please call us at 1-323-658-1146 or email us. We would also love to hear from you about ideas for enhancements to SIMDATE which will make your life easier.

Copyright © 1997 by The Firstech Corporation.