by Eb Guenther
“Year 2000 in a Nutshell”, by Norman Shakespeare. O’Reilly & Associates, Sebastopol, CA. First printing Sep 1998. List price $19.95, which puts the street price at about $16.
In a nutshell (groan), this O’Reilly entry into the Year 2000 fray is a keeper. By the time you read this review there will be less than a year ‘till the “Millennium Bomb” goes off, and the modest price of this book has no relation to the amount of money it might save you.
“Year 2000 in a Nutshell” targets businesses and computer professionals who have not yet bitten the bullet, and started their own Y2K project. The plan presented is primarily directed those who have access to the source code containing the time bombs. This may include you, if you have designed spreadsheets, databases, or written utility programs. More likely beneficiaries are companies with custom programs, especially on mainframes.
Even though home computer users or single PC offices may benefit, they are less likely to have their survival at stake. Larger commercial enterprises who have customers awaiting Y2K solutions, may already have attorneys preparing law suits.
If you’re reading this review with an idea of helping you out of the grave you dug yourself by procrastinating about compliance issues, let me say first, that you will not find much better than this book in outlining what problems to expect, and what steps to take (see the brief description of other books on the topic at the end of this article). But don’t expect to find miracle cures. The solutions to Year 2000 problems will still take countless man-hours of hard work, lots of money, and plenty of antacids.
“Year 2000 in a Nutshell” will help you organize your approach to Y2k. It may even supply some of the tools needed. Mr. Shakespeare summarizes the problems and the solutions he offers better than his “competitors” manage in the long form.
In the true “Nutshell” books spirit, this one is no exception in that there are lots of straight-to-the-point arguments, often in list form. Sometimes these lists lack formal sentence structure. If that bothers you, check out the books I listed at the end — they contain plenty of padding.
While Mr. Shakespeare shows an excellent understanding of the Y2K cause and effects, he really impressed me with his comprehensive “Macro Project Plan” of managing software compliance. This plan manages the project, supported by technical details of date conversions, leap year handling, and file conversions. Shakespeare provides a technical reference of sample templates and worksheets for the evaluation phase of a Y2K project, followed by a COBOL reference, and a date function reference in several computer languages (COBOL, PL/1, VB, and C). For companies with in-house programmers he provides Visual Basic source for a code scanning program (to detect date calls in the target code).
Finally, as his only appendix, he lists nearly 300 URLs of Y2K related resources.
My only complaint about “Year 2000 in a Nutshell” was that it is too late! Shakespeare’s sample “Macro Project Plan” (p103) requires 400 days for the project, with a starting date of March ‘98. The book’s first printing was September of 98 (oops, make that 1998).
But don’t let that deter you from using the book. It can get you started, though the shorter time will cost you more. I see this as an investment opportunity: Antacid sales will soar!
How does this book compare to others
on the topic?
I checked all other Y2K offerings on bookstore shelves at the time of this writing (October ‘98). The bookstore clerks were very helpful, and did not seem to mind that I stood there taking notes. All books I found were oriented toward management awareness. None of them offered actual solutions beyond “upgrade software and hardware, hire an expert to convert your files.” I would not recommend any of them. Compared to them, “Year 2000 in a Nutshell” is like an MBA to a Liberal Arts BA.
Here is a brief review of the (mostly more expensive) alternatives to “Year 2000 in a Nutshell”:
“Time Bomb 2000” by Yourdon, Prentice Hall. A series of problems sets (all similar) repeated for the special circumstances of Advertising, Banks, Doctors, Lawyers, Insurance, etc.
The Yourdons have turned an article into a book by repeating the same thing over and over with different labels.
“The Millennium Bug”, by Hyatt, Regenery Publishing. Similar in style to Time Bomb. Less repetition.
“Computer Crisis 2000”, by Fletcher, Self-Council Press. Describes the logistics of attacking a 2000 project.
“The Year 2000 Software Crisis”, by Hayes and Ullrich, Prentice Hall. Similar to the above.
“The Year 2000 Software Crisis” by Ullrich and Hayes, Prentice Hall. Different looking cover, thicker, more pages, larger type, larger illustrations, thicker paper (?), Looks like the same book in a different package., sneaky trick of Authors names reversed, to get two entries into “Books in Print by Author.”
Forget the others, and get the O’Reilly book.
Year 2000 in a Nutshell
By Norman Shakespeare
1st Edition September 1998
1-56592-421-5, Order Number: 4215
330 pages, $19.95
Eb Guenther has been a HAL-PC member since the mid eighties. If your name is Guenther, see Eb’s Website at www.guenther.com. Eb can be reached at ebg@guenther.com n
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