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VPLUS version B.06.07 (and later) contains enhancements to handle the year
2000 and beyond in applications. For more detailed information including
syntax and parameters, refer to the article, "Year 2000 and Other Enhancements
in VPLUS," in the chapter, "Technical Articles."
Turn-of-century Enhancement
VPLUS version B.06.07 contains enhancements to handle Year 2000 and beyond in
applications. These enhancements can be grouped into three segments as
follows:
- Intrinsic enhancements
- FORMSPEC enhancements
- Processing enhancements
Intrinsic Enhancements
Two new intrinsics have been added to VPLUS to handle dates in the next
century. These are VGETYYYYMMDD and VPUTYYYYMMDD. These
intrinsics are similar in structure and function to the existing intrinsics
VGETYYMMDD and VPUTYYMMDD respectively. The difference is
that the date values handled by the new intrinsics contain 4-digit year
components.
FORMSPEC Enhancements
FORMSPEC Application Ready Buffer (ARB) processing has been enhanced with the
addition of a new ARB data type. This data type can be specified on the DTC
Menu for Data Type Conversions from Screen Type to Application Type. The new
ARB Type is YYYYMD and is defined as a 8-byte ASCII field containing
a date value in YMD order with no separators. Also the year component
in the date value has 4 digits. Note that FORMSPEC will ensure a length of 8
for the data type YYYYMD in the ARB. In essence, the value is of the
form YYYYMMDD (8 bytes) even though the Type designator on the DTC
Menu has been abbreviated to YYYYMD.
Processing Enhancements
Date processing in VPLUS has been enhanced to handle date values with 4-digit
year components. Specifically, the following additions have been made.
Date output will be formatted with 4-digit years if the target field is wide
enough to receive the date, and the user requests this action. Examples of
such output include the SET statement in FORMSPEC. The target field
should be at least 10 characters in length to have a 4-digit year output.
VPLUS, by default, will format date output with 2-digit years. To change the
behavior as described above, define a JCW called VSETNEXTCENTURY and
set bit 15 to 1 (bits are numbered from 0 through 15). It should be noted that
this option will be active for fields wide enough to hold the 4-digit year
date. For other fields, 2-digit years will be used.
Existing 2-digit years can be interpreted differently to handle dates in the
next century. Currently VPLUS handles year components 00-99 as 1900-1999. This
scheme of interpretation can be changed. In the new scheme, 00-49 is
interpreted as 2000-2049 and 50-99 is interpreted as 1950-1999. This
interpretation will be valid through all processing done by VPLUS. For example,
this scheme will allow the user to enter 02/29/00 (MDY order) in an existing
application and have it processed correctly.
To invoke this method of date interpretation, define a JCW called
VSETNEXTCENTURY and set bit 14 to 1. This method is used for
processing only 2-digit year dates and not 4-digit year dates. The display of
2-digit year dates is not affected by this enhancement. This means that
12/11/10 (MDY order) can refer to 1910 in one application and 2010 in another
application.
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NOTE: When defining the JCW VSETNEXTCENTURY, set all unused
bits to 0.
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