CFCSEIC News Briefs Week Ending July 17, 1998

CFCSEIC News Briefs Week Ending July 17, 1998

[Center for Computer Systems Engineering Information Clearinghouse]

Center for Computer Systems Engineering News Briefs
Week Ending:  July 17, 1998

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CONTENTS:
DOD EXTENDS NETSCAPE ENTERPRISE LICENSE
BUILT-IN TESTS AND REUSE IN OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING
NFC:  READINESS REQUIRES CONTINGENCY PLANNING 
WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE TESTS Y2K FIXES
MISSING SOURCE CODE
Y2K SING ALONG

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DOD EXTENDS NETSCAPE ENTERPRISE LICENSE

Topic:  Software Engineering

The Defense Information Systems Agency's (DISA's) Enterprise Software 
License Division has extended the Department of Defense's (DoD's) 
licensing agreement with Netscape Communications Corporation through 
September 30, 1999.  This license agreement, negotiated under the 
Agency's Integrated Computer-Aided Software Engineering (I-CASE) 
contract, provides Netscape client and server software products to the 
entire DoD, covering over two million users.  DoD employees, contractors 
working on-site at DoD facilities, and contractors working off-site on 
DoD-furnished equipment, can run these Netscape products on their work, 
portable, or personal/home workstations. They will be able to access the 
Netscape servers covered under this contract anywhere they are deployed 
within the worldwide DoD environment.

The Netscape products included under the new licensing agreement are 
Netscape Communicator Client (Professional Edition with and without 
FORTEZZA), Enterprise Server with LiveWire Enterprise Server with and 
without FORTEZZA, Messaging Server with and without FORTEZZA, Collabra 
Server with and without FORTEZZA, Directory Server with and without 
FORTEZZA, Certificate Server, and two new servers added under the 
contract extension - Mission Control and Security Services.  

Additional Netscape products not currently covered under the DoD-Wide 
Netscape Enterprise Licensing Agreement can still be purchased under the 
I-CASE contract at prices lower than those on the GSA schedule.  The 
I-CASE contract also makes products from approximately 110 other vendors 
available to government users at prices below GSA schedule.

For further information about the products available through the Netscape 
DoD-Wide Enterprise Licensing Agreement or the I-CASE contract, please 
contact DISA's Enterprise Software License Division at 703-681-2088 or 
licenses@ncr.disa.mil.

Source:  Richard Reinhardt, Enterprise Software License Division, 
703-681-2103,  reinharr@ncr.disa.mil

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BUILT-IN TESTS AND REUSE IN OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING

Topic:  Software Engineering

The authors of this article in the July issue of Software Engineering 
Notes question whether the capability of object-oriented programming 
(OOP) has developed completely, or whether new methodologies can be 
developed that will further its evolution.  They answer their own 
question in this article.  They have developed a new kind of software 
test, a built-in test (BIT), which is explicitly described in the source 
code of software as member functions.  Software with BITs has two 
operation modes:  normal mode for execution, and test mode for debugging, 
testing, and maintenance.  The BITs are on standby in normal mode and can 
be activated in test mode.  This paper introduces the concept of BITs, 
and provides standard structures that incorporate the BITS into 
conventional object-oriented software (OOS).  The authors discuss reuse 
methodologies for BITs that are developed at object and system levels in 
OOS.  The authors believe that extending the inheritable structure and 
reusability of OOS from code to test using the BIT methods can enhance 
the capability of object-oriented mechanisms such as encapsulation, 
inheritance, and reusability.  They state that OOP supplemented by BITs 
can form a new self-testable programming method.

Source:  Yingxu Wang (wangy@sbu.ac.uk), Graham King 
(Graham.King@solent.ac.uk), Dilip Patel (dilip@sbu.ac.uk), Ian Court, 
Geoff Staples, Margaret Ross, and Shushma Patel, "On Built-In Tests and 
Reuse in Object-Oriented Programming", Software Engineering Notes, v23 n 
4, pp. 60-64  http://www.acm.org

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NFC:  READINESS REQUIRES CONTINGENCY PLANNING

Topic:  Y2k

According to an article in the July 13th issue of Government Computer 
News, the National Finance Center has finished making its date code 
fixes.  The USDA center fixed 23.5 million lines of code, which was 
primarily written in COBOL and "chock full" of dates.  It has fixed its 
mission-critical applications on schedule, and will begin validation 
testing.  Later this month, NFC will test its readiness to operate for an 
extended time under diesel power.  They will bring up every machine, 
light, and terminal.  If there is any possibility of computer-induced 
electrical outages after 2000, they intend to park several diesel trucks 
near the center.  John Ortego, the center's director, said that readiness 
required a lot of contingency planning.

The center processes the payroll for 100,000 Agriculture employees; the 
IRS and Library of Congress; the Commerce, Justice, and Treasury 
Departments; and handles processing for 2.3 million participants in the 
federal Thrift Savings Plan. 

This summer NFC's Y2k staff will begin copying entire applications 
running on two IBM ES/9000 mainframes and loading them onto a separate 
IBM System/390 time machine for forward date testing.  The time machine 
has a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor processor rated at 61 
million instructions per second, a terabyte of attached storage, two 
robotic tape silos, and an IBM 3745 front-end communications processor 
for testing 500 interfaces to external systems.  NFC is already 
scheduling clients for testing on their time machine.

The center used windowing logic rather than date field expansion.  The 
added logic can handle two-digit or four-digit dates, but that won't work 
for all cases.  There are a few special cases that NFC is aware of, and 
if systems that affect them haven't been replaced, the center will handle 
them manually.

NFC has already spent $8 million, and may spend another $2 to test and 
retest readiness through 1999.  Many of their younger staff were not 
trained in COBOL.  NFC got around this problem by providing in-house 
training and pairing them with experienced COBOL programmers.

Source:  Florence Olsen, "NFC's ready to 'take on' 2000", Government 
Computer News, July 13, 1998  http://www.gcn.com/gcn/1998/July13/cov1.htm
 
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WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE TESTS Y2K FIXES

Topic:  Y2k

White Sands Missile Range tested its Y2k fixes by rolling its computers' 
internal clocks forward past the Year 2000.  This vast system of 
computers was able to successfully track a jet aircraft without a 
glitch.  Five clock changes were made in the computers that controlled 
the jet as it traveled 15,000 feet above the range at a speed of nearly 
500 mph.  The clock was rolled forward to Jan. 1, 2000; Leap Day; the day 
after Leap Day; the last day of the year; and the first day of 2001.  
White Sands expects to share what they have learned with other organizations.
 
They spent nine months and nearly $1 million preparing for this test.  A 
simulation was conducted before the F4 Phantom jet, which was modified to 
be flown as a drone, took off.  Until the computers' clocks were reset in 
real time, no one knew for certain whether the patches would work.

White Sands officials had to scan 10,000 software packages and examine 
more than 4,000 computers to fix date-code problems.  They tried Y2k 
tools, but rejected them because they generated as much, or more, code 
than the programs they were analyzing.  They identified and fixed 
programs manually in order to meet the Army's compliance deadline.

Rona Stillman, chief scientist for computers and telecommunications at 
the General Accounting Office feels that rolling the date forward on 
computer systems can be dangerous, and that the system can make changes 
that cannot be rolled back.  Range officials also were concerned about 
the danger of accidentally ending software licenses tied to certain time 
periods, and about other unseen effects in their test results, which they 
will be studying for some time.

Source:   Anne A. Armstrong (anne_armstrong@fcw.com), "Y2K test hits mark 
at missile range",  Federal Computer Week,  July 6, 1998  
http://www.fcw.com/pubs/fcw/1998/0706/fcw-newsmissile-7-6-1998.html

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MISSING SOURCE CODE

Topic:  Y2k/Software Engineering

As much as 3% of your total source code may be missing, according to 
leading Y2k consultants.  Some of it may be mission-critical.  The Source 
Recovery Company (SRC) LLC, based in Framingham, MA specializes in 
reverse-engineering executable code back to the source code.  SRC's 
technology can recover Assembler or COBOL code in the IBM environment for 
any MVS, VSE, or VM program.  They claim that their Assembler 
Recovery/SRC 2.0 may be the first service to disassemble Assembler code 
to the macro level.  For more information about this service, see 
http://www.source-recovery.com.

Source:  Ian Hayes and William Ulrich, "Locating 'MIA' Source Code", 
Software Magazine, July 15, 1998  
http://www.sentrytech.com/Y2K/Y2Kjul98/y2k078nf.htm

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Y2K SING ALONG

Topic:  Y2k

Two Digits for a Date (to the tune of "Gilligan's Island," more or less):

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale
Of the doom that is our fate.
That started when programmers used
Two digits for a date.
Two digits for a date.

Main memory was smaller then;
Hard disks were smaller, too.
"Four digits are extravagant,
So let's get by with two.
So let's get by with two."

"This works through 1999,"
The programmers did say.
"Unless we rewrite by then
It all will go away.
It all will go away."

But management had not a clue:
"It works fine now, you bet!
A rewrite is a straight expense;
We won't do it just yet.
We won't do it just yet."

Now when 2000 rolls around
It all goes straight to hell,
For zero's less than 99, 
As anyone can tell.
As anyone can tell.

The mail won't bring your pension check
It won't be sent to you
When you're no longer 68,
But minus 32, 
But minus 32.

The problems we're about to face
Are frightening, for sure.
And reading every line of code's
The only certain cure.
The only certain cure

Source:  Ian Hayes and William Ulrich, "Locating 'MIA' Source Code", 
Software Magazine, July 15, 1998  
http://www.sentrytech.com/Y2K/Y2Kjul98/y2k078nf.htm

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