Shakespeare's new book, just released by O'Reilly & Associates, is divided into phases: awareness and detection, planning and conversion, and implementation. It includes a rudimentary, but completely functional code-scanner and reporter. It covers programming languages, operating systems, and hardware. From a managerial viewpoint, it provides templates for project plans, reports, and fiscal and legal considerations.
Year 2000 in a Nutshell does not dwell on simple concepts or doomsday scenarios. It is, instead, a concise, factual reference work covering the major issues relating to the biggest obstacle in computing history. It offers a clear-cut, top-down, problem-solving approach. There are densely packed sections on date-manipulation routines for many common languages, PC hardware and packages, and an essential reference section on the most affected language- COBOL-which will be of particular value to those programmers who have been assigned the task of making the COBOL code Y2K compliant, but haven't had much experience with the COBOL language.
Year 2000 in a Nutshell is a reference guide that addresses three main aspects of the Year 2000 computer dilemma:
- Awareness: covers main issues such as compliance, costs,
event-horizons, embedded dates and systems, date stamping, timing,
staffing, and benefits of Y2K conversion
- Managerial: covers considerations such as: triage (when the Y2K
conversion process isn't started soon enough), legal issues, budgets,
and standards. Also covers a project-plan: inventory, analysis, logistical
estimates, planning and strategies, conversion, and testing and
implementation
- Technical: covers: dates, Julian day, windowing, single-digit century, file and database date conversion, and PC issues
Norman Shakespeare is a private consultant with 20 years of experience in electronics, PC and mini hardware, networking, programming, and training. Originally from Zimbabwe, he has lived in South Africa and Canada.
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Year 2000 in a
Nutshell
By Norman Shakespeare
1st Edition October 1998 (US)
336 pages, 1-56592-421-5, $19.95 (US)
About O’Reilly
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