CFCSEIC News Briefs Week Ending February 27, 1998

CFCSEIC News Briefs Week Ending February 27, 1998

[CFCSEIC]

Center for Computer Systems Engineering News Briefs
Week Ending:  February 27, 1998

****************************************************************************

CONTENTS:
OMB MOVES UP Y2K DEADLINE
CALCULATING THE COST OF Y2K COMPLIANCE
VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS IMPACT REAL-WORLD SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
ADA + JAVA = FUN

**************************************************************************

OMB MOVES UP Y2K DEADLINE
Topic:  Y2K

An article in the Feb. 23rd edition of Government Computer News reviews 
the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB's) new deadline for the 
completion of date code fixes.  OMB Director Franklin D. Raines has 
issued a memorandum to agency chiefs stating that he wants all 
mission-critical and non-mission-critical systems Y2k-ready by March 
1999, eight months earlier than the previous November 1999 deadline.  
Agencies must complete all code renovations by September 1998 and all 
code testing by January 1999.  The new deadlines leave agencies 11 months 
to implement system fixes, resolve unexpected problems that arise during 
implementation, and check and correct all interfaces with systems run by 
outside entities such as state and local governments and industry.  
According to the article, the OMB memorandum also directs agencies to 
make explicit triage decisions as they prioritize their work, and to 
establish contingency plans for systems that will not be ready in time.

Source:  Christopher J. Dorobek, "OMB moves up 2000 deadline", Government 
Computer News, v17, n4, p.1.  http://www.gcn.com

******************************************************************************
***************

CALCULATING THE COST OF Y2K COMPLIANCE
Topic:  Y2K

Most Y2K program managers use size measures such as lines of code, number 
of function points and dollars of annual information systems spending to 
estimate the cost of fixing Y2k problems, but these generic 
cost-estimation approaches are prone to error when applied to specific 
enterprises.  In an article in the February edition of Communications 
Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), the  
authors use data from a study conducted by the Society of Information 
Management's (SIM's) Year 2000 Working Group to explore the relationship 
between an enterprise, its Y2k problems, the solutions it chooses, and the 
impact that availability and management of resources have on the process of 
cost estimation.  

Source:  Leon A. Kappelman, Darla Fent, Kellie B. Keeling, and Victor 
Prybutok, "Calculating the Cost of Year-2000 Compliance", Communications 
of the ACM, Feb. 1998, v41, n2, pp. 30-39.  http://acm.org

******************************************************************************
***************

VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS IMPACT REAL-WORLD SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
Topic:  Software Engineering

In the past, virtual environments (VEs) were built as games involving the 
exploration of rooms containing various obstacles and opponents. Recent 
research has focused on the viability of using VEs to aid work and 
collaboration in the real world. In an article in the January issue of 
The ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, the authors 
discuss their investigation of the use of multi-user dimensions (MUDs) in 
the area of software development and their creation of a system, Promo, 
which permits the modeling and execution of software processes by 
geographically dispersed agents.

Source:  John C. Doppke, Dennis Heimbigner, and Alexander L. Wolf, 
"Software Process Modeling and Execution within Virtual Environments, The 
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, v7, n1, pp. 
1-40.  http://www.acm.org/tosem.

******************************************************************************
***************

ADA + JAVA = FUN
Topic:  Ada

It may have been around for a while, but the ancient African game of 
Mancala was brought into the modern computer age by the merger of two 
high-tech companies, software developer Intermetrics, Inc. of Burlington, 
MA, and game developer Looking Glass Studios, located in Cambridge, MA.
Designed in Ada, using Java applets, this new version of Mancala can be 
played on the Web at http://www.inmet.com/~stt/mancala.html.

******************************************************************************
***************

The DISA CFCSEIC welcomes suggestions for and pointers to software 
engineering-related articles.  

Contact the DISA CFCSEIC at:  mailto:info@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us   
    
To subscribe to the "Center for Computer Systems Engineering News Brief" 
electronic mailing list, send a message to:    
       mailto:listproc@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us    
In the body of the message, write:    
        subscribe newslist <your name>    
To unsubscribe, write:    
        unsubscribe newslist    
No signatures please.

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Center for Computer Systems
Engineering Information Clearinghouse (CFCSEIC) "Center for Computer
Systems Engineering News Briefs" is a compilation of summaries from
software engineering-related articles in trade magazines, newsletters and
press releases.

For subscription information about the CFCSEIC DII COE Q&A LISTSERV, 
point to:

<http://sw-eng.falls-church.va.us/cseic/listserv/maillist.html>.