Year 2000
Readiness Disclosure
Tuesday, March 09, 1999
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Introduction
This document has been prepared as A Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure as defined by the
Year 2000 Information and Readiness Act. It provides information concerning how the Year
2000 problem affects all of Mentor Software’s products and the status of Mentor
Software’s Year 2000 testing program. This document applies to all Mentor Software
products published and release since January 1, 1996. It should be noted that this
document is a disclosure and not a warranty or guarantee of any kind. Mentor Software only
represents that the information contained herein represents Mentor Software’s best
knowledge of the true state of affairs at the time of writing. This disclosure supersedes
any and all previously issued statements, disclosures, or publications concerning the Year
2000 status of Mentor Software products.
Mentor Software will republish this disclosure as new information becomes available.
General Information
None of Mentor Software’s products access or use the year number of the date in
any way. To the limited extent that Mentor Software’s product do access the date,
such date is processed in the form of seconds since midnight of January 1, 1970; a
technique common to programs written in the ‘C’ language, and generally
recognized to remain valid through the year 2037. Thus, Mentor Software’s products do
not directly access any numeric value which specifically relates to the year number in any
way.
General Disclaimer
Given the above, Mentor Software products rely on the fact that the system hardware,
firmware, BIOS, and operating system of your computer, and the run time library provided
with the compiler Mentor Software uses to manufacture its products (Microsoft Visual C++),
correctly generate the number of seconds since midnight January 1, 1970 regardless of the
current date. Since Mentor Software has no control over these aspects of the system and
its products, Mentor Software cannot provide information or assurances of any kind (other
than the testing described below) as to their veracity with regard to any specific point
in time.
Any given Mentor Software retail product may incorporate one or more of the following
software products:
- Crypkey Software Licensing System, by Kenonics Controls, Calgary Alberta
- OpenDWG Library, by the OpenDWG Consortium, Seattle Washington
- InstallBuilder, by Wise Solutions, Canton Michigan
- AutoCAD ARX Library, Autodesk, San Rafael California
- ‘C’ Runtime Library, by Microsoft, Inc., Redmond Washington
- MFC Class Library, by Microsoft, Inc., Redmond Washington
Mentor Software’s products are/have been compiled using Microsoft Visual C++
compiler, versions 4.0, 4.2, 5.0, and 6.0. Several of Mentor Software’s products can
be accessed only through the facilities of AutoCAD®, Releases 12, 13, and 14.
In all cases of the above, Mentor Software cannot provide information on, or accept any
responsibility for, Year 2000 compliance issues related to these products.
Use of Date
Mentor Software’s products use the date and time in three different ways. Each of
these is described in detail in the following sub-sections.
Protecting Coordinate System/Datum/Ellipsoid Definitions
In the case where the Coordinate System definition protection has not been disabled as
described in the product manuals, Mentor Software products will automatically protect user
coordinate system, datum, and ellipsoid definitions which have remained unchanged for a
period of 60 days. As described above, the technique used to determine age is based on
elapsed time from a specific epoch, namely midnight of January 1, 1970. The value stored
with the definitions is actually "days since January 1, 1970", and the
comparison is done in terms of "days since January 1, 1970". Thus, the actual
year number is not a part of the calculation.
License Expiration of Retail Products
Mentor Software’s retail products may also use the date, in seconds since midnight
January 1, 1970 form, to store license expiration dates and to determine if a license has
expired. All related calculations are performed using seconds since midnight of January 1,
1970. These values are converted to normal date form, which does include a year number,
but such conversion is accomplished by the ‘C’ Runtime strftime function.
The results of this conversion are used for display purposes only.
Reporting Date and Time
Several of Mentor Software’s products will display to the operator, or record in a
report file, the date and time at which a specific event occurred. In all cases, the date
is obtained in seconds since midnight of January 1, 1970 form and the ‘C’ run
time library function strftime is used to immediately convert this binary value to
printable form. The printable form does include a year number, but this value is used for
display purposes only.
Tests Completed
Mentor Software has devised, and is executing, a testing procedure to substantiate the
statements made above with objective experience. At the time of this writing, the
following tests have been completed:
CS-MAP - Release 9
Using a computer running the Windows 95 operating system with the clock set at 6:00PM
December 31, 1999 local time, the TEST program which is normally supplied with the CS-MAP
distribution was started in an infinite sequence through all tests. Twenty four hours
later, with the computer date showing 12:00 noon January 1, 2000, the test program was
still sequencing through all tests without error.
Using a computer running the Windows 95 operating system with the clock set at 6:00PM
February 28, 2000 local time, the TEST program which is normally supplied with the CS-MAP
distribution was started in an infinite sequence through all tests. Twenty four hours
later, with the computer date showing 12:00 noon February 29, 2000, the test program was
still sequencing through all tests without error.
Examinations Completed
Mentor Software has searched its source code for certain strings which indicate the
presence of date related code. The results of each examination completed as of this
writing are given below.
CS-MAP, Release 9
The source code for CS-MAP Release 9, has been searched for occurrences of references
to the following ‘C’ run time library functions: time, ctime, asctime,
difftime, ftime, getdate, gmtime, localtime, strftime,
tzset. With one exception, all cases where a reference to any such function was
found, it was verified that the usage of the function was consistent with the statements
made above in the section titled Use of Date. CS-MAP TEST program’s use of the
‘C’ Runtime library time function to seed a random generator is the
exception located during this examination.
Tralaine, Release 4
The source code for Tralaine for Windows, i.e. Tralaine Release 4, has been searched
for occurrences of references to the following ‘C’ run time library functions: time,
ctime, asctime, difftime, ftime, getdate, gmtime,
localtime, strftime, tzset. In all cases where a reference to any
such function was found, it was verified that the usage of the function was consistent
with the statements made above in the section titled Use of Date.
TralaineDLL, Release 8
The source code for TralaineDLL Release 8, has been searched for occurrences of
references to the following ‘C’ run time library functions: time, ctime,
asctime, difftime, ftime, getdate, gmtime, localtime,
strftime, tzset. In all cases where a reference to any such function was
found, it was verified that the usage of the function was consistent with the statements
made above in the section titled Use of Date.
TralaineDLL, Release 9
The source code for TralaineDLL Release 9, has been searched for occurrences of
references to the following ‘C’ run time library functions: time, ctime,
asctime, difftime, ftime, getdate, gmtime, localtime,
strftime, tzset. In all cases where a reference to any such function was
found, it was verified that the usage of the function was consistent with the statements
made above in the section titled Use of Date.
Hawkeye, Release 14
The source code for Hawkeye for windows has been searched for occurrences of references
to the following ‘C’ run time library functions: time, ctime, asctime,
difftime, ftime, getdate, gmtime, localtime, strftime,
tzset. In all cases where a reference to any such function was found, it was
verified that the usage of the function was consistent with the statements made above in
the section titled Use of Date.
Multric, Release 14
The source code for Multric for windows has been searched for occurrences of references
to the following ‘C’ run time library functions: time, ctime, asctime,
difftime, ftime, getdate, gmtime, localtime, strftime,
tzset. In all cases where a reference to any such function was found, it was
verified that the usage of the function was consistent with the statements made above in
the section titled Use of Date. |
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