BizInt Solutions Product Support
Year 2000 Certification — Status
BizInt Smart Charts for Pharmaceuticals & BizInt Smart Charts Viewer
- Version 2.0.26 and earlier: These versions of our original product, BizInt Smart Charts for Pharmaceuticals, will continue to function after December 31, 1999. Files created before January 1, 2000 will be completely accurate. But files created with these versions in the year 2000 and after will show incorrect dates for search and modification dates.
- Version 2.0.27: Released June 15, 1998, this is a minor release to correct minor software bugs, but does include modifications to make it Year 2000 compliant. The software will correctly recognize dates after January 1, 2000.
- Version 2.1: This major release, released in September 1999, is the official Year 2000 compliant version.
BizInt Smart Charts for Patents
- Version 1.0: Released August 1998, this version is Year 2000 compliant.
- Version 1.1: Released August 1999, is Year 2000 compliant and supports the Y2K data format changes made by Derwent.
BizInt Smart Charts for Patents Viewer
- Version 1.0: Released October 1998, this version is Year 2000 compliant.
- Version 2.0: Released September 1999, this version is Year 2000 compliant.
Year 2000 Issues
This section describes the various ways in which dates are used in the BizInt Smart Charts applications, and how the software has been prepared for use in the year 2000.
Dates in the Application
BizInt Smart Charts uses Julian day numbers stored in a 32-bit unsigned integer to represent dates internally. This representation will remain valid for many thousands of years to come. Comparison of Julian day numbers is defined and correct over the full extent of the represented range.
Dates stored in this internal format are used for one of three purposes in BizInt Smart Charts:
- Comparison of document publication dates;
- Capture and display of chart file creation/modification date; and,
- Normalization of selected dates from the data sources for display.
Dates in Data Sources
BizInt Smart Charts products create tabular reports from a variety of data sources. In many cases, dates are simply treated as text. However in some situations, dates are converted to our internal representation. Dates in the data sources which have 2-digit years are converted to a 4-digit year using a window technique. 2-digit dates from 50 through 99 are interpreted as representing 1950 - 1999. 2-digit dates from 00 through 49 are interepreted as 2000 - 2049.
It should be noted that only a few dates are converted to internal format in any particular database (most often the publication date of the document). All others are displayed exactly as presented by the database publisher.
Date Searches (BizInt Smart Charts for Pharmaceuticals only)
BizInt Smart Charts for Pharmaceuticals includes a search interface for the DataStar online service. All supported databases on DataStar have been converted to offer Year 2000 Compliant date searching. BizInt Smart Charts uses the recommended methods to search dates on DataStar.
The search interface in BizInt Smart Charts generates lists of dates for searching, particularly for document publication dates. The generation of these search term lists uses the standard BizInt Smart Charts internal date representation.
© 2002 BizInt Solutions