Expansion not Windowing, and at the moment Field Expansion is not a strong point for ALYD.
As I've pointed out, one of the primary reasons ALYD has gotten the client list it has gotten was the realization back in early '97 that the market wanted windowing. Good thing, too, as you can't automate expansion nearly to the level you can windowing. (gg)
[Note to non-techies: "Windowing" means, for the most part, intercepting dates (rather than physically changing them) and adding the century based on a cutoff date. For example, all years greater than "50" get a "19" added, whereas anything less gets a "20". Expansion simply changes the actual date to having a four character year.]
So, for Y2K, whether ALYD put expansion, packed binary, bigits, or whatever on the back burner, it really doesn't matter. On the other hand, if ALYD has or will make a business decision to vigorously pursue Euro work then I think the original SmartCode has or will give them a sound foundation for a full-fledged Euro tool. From what I gather from your post, there's no compelling reason for ALYD to allocate more than the minimal resources needed to simply keep such a project going forward.
- Jeff |
