Date:         Wed, 12 Feb 1997 11:35:38 GMT
Reply-To:     Philip Holland <phil.holland@BCS.ORG.UK>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
From:         Philip Holland <phil.holland@BCS.ORG.UK>
Organization: -
Subject:      Re: Year 2000 problem?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

cjw@is.rpslmc.edu (Christopher J. Wargaski) wrote:
>
>       I am a computer and network analyst and involved in a project to
>see if certain software packages for a department I support are year 2000
>compatible.  Many software packages like Access and Excel only as
>compatible as the user is, however, some statistical analysis packages like
>S-Plus are not.
>
>       Having never used SAS myself, I must ask, where does SAS fall in
>this category?  If it is not year 2000 compatible, as of what release is it
>expectected to be?  (Last week I wrote SAS, but have not heard anything
>back.)
>
>                                       Regards,
>                                       cjw
>
>
>Christopher Wargaski --  Network Services -- cjw@is.rush.edu
>Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center -- Chicago, Illinois
 
Christopher,
 
SAS has internally been 2000 compliant for many years.  All
date data are stored internally as numeric offsets from 1st
Jan 1960, so the Millenium is not a significant event (eg.
31Dec1999=14609, 1Jan2000=14610).  The only real problems come
from text interfaces between SAS and other applications which
use a date format including the year as YY, instead of YYYY.
SAS itself has a system option, YEARCUTOFF=, which allows you
to make a reasonable assumption if it reads a YY year, eg. by
default it uses YEARCUTOFF=1900 and 97 is read as 1997 and 25
as 1925, if YEARCUTOFF=1950 then 97 is read as 1997 and 25 as
2025, etc.
 
It is recommended that the YEARCUTOFF= option be looked at
closely to set it to a sensible value for your business.
Apart from that input and output date fields should be read as
DATE9. format (ie. ddmmmyyyy) instead of the default DATE.
(ie. DATE.), and MMDDYY10. (ie. mm/dd/yyyy) instead of MMDDYY.
(ie. MMDDYY8.) to accept 4-digit years where used.
 
I can continue for a long time in this vein, but I think this
will do for now.  If you have any additional questions just
email me.
 
HTH.........Philip R Holland <phil.holland@bcs.org.uk>
            (SAS UK Registered Partner)
            Holland Numerics Ltd
            Royston, Herts, UK
            mobile: +44-(0)850-295556