Year 2000 Wire/Data Integrity Announces First Year 2000 IV&V Tool for PL/I System Code; Finds All Bugs Missed During Remediation, Accelerates Y2K Testing.

WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 20, 1999--

Product Surpasses Glossary Search Methods; Based On 100% Accurate

Technique Used in Banking, Healthcare, Insurance, Government

Data Integrity, Inc. (dii), developer of the fastest, most accurate and least expensive Year 2000 technology solutions, has announced Millennium CrossChecktm for PL/I, the only independent validation and verification (IV&V) that audits remediated PL/I code to identify lingering Y2K bugs. The tool utilizes the proven Y2K search technique incorporated in Millennium CrossCheck for Cobol, Data Integrity's unique IV&V product that comprehensively evaluates computer system code and accelerates Year 2000 system testing. Millennium CrossCheck eliminates all "false negatives" before and during the test phase of Year 2000 conversion projects.

Millennium CrossCheck for PL/I delivers immediate benefits:

--Keeps Year 2000 projects on schedule and on budget by cross checking remediation work, significantly reducing Y2K testing time and costs

--Conducts due diligence with a different third-party search/validation technique on Y2K conversions, and thus finds bugs that were missed during the remediation process

--Co-exists, without disruption, with other Year 2000 search-and-fix tools already in use on Y2K project work

--Catches all potentially dangerous date operations missed by other Y2K search methods, complementing existing remediation process

--Accelerates redeployment of application code to production by eliminating test/re-test cycles.

Millennium CrossCheck for PL/I, available now, addresses the crucial need for more accurate identification of Y2K-sensitive code than is offered by conventional glossary, or pattern matching, search techniques incorporated in Y2K windowing tools. Glossary searching misses 5 to 20 percent of date-sensitive code, leading to extensive problems with false negatives (non-compliant code undetected in the remediation process) during Y2K compliance tests. Because Millennium CrossCheck for PL/I utilizes a search technique that differs from conventional search methods, the product offers a truly `objective,' third-party method for identifying non-compliant code before organizations enter into the costly and time consuming process of Y2K testing.

Millennium CrossCheck for PL/I leverages the proven, breakthrough Y2K search capability built into Data Integrity's Y2K software solutions now being used successfully in major Year 2000 projects at NationsBank, Credit Suisse First Boston, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Delta Technologies, major healthcare and insurance organizations and U.S. government agencies. This unique search technique has identified 100 percent of Y2K-sensitive code. Millennium CrossCheck for PL/I is highly effective in a third-party, complementary role because it delivers 100 percent search accuracy and because it is integrated easily and without disruption into ongoing project work already begun using other Y2K tools.

"There is a critical need for an IV&V tool that addresses legacy systems written in PL/I," said Allen G. Burgess, President of Data Integrity. "The great benefit of Millennium CrossCheck for PL/I is that it uses a unique search technique not already used in the remediation process -- it's like getting a fresh pair of eyes to proofread your writing. The tool significantly enhances and accelerates the Y2K testing process, and gets applications back into production in minimal time frames. It eliminates all false negatives and saves organizations an immense amount of testing difficulty and expense."

At customer sites, Millennium CrossCheck for Cobol, released in June 1998, has typically found between one and 50 errors per 10,000 lines of remediated code. Extrapolated over 1 million lines of code, that's 100 to 5,000 additional Y2K errors missed during the original code renovation. Millennium CrossCheck has even found lingering bugs in systems that had received full Y2K compliance certification. Millennium CrossCheck augments Y2K testing scenarios, which typically advance date fields found in applications to values that reach and then span the 1999/2000 boundary. However, date fields not previously identified are not advanced and thus not tested. Millennium CrossCheck ensures that comprehensive testing takes place by ensuring that all dates are advanced.

Instead of the conventional glossary or pattern matching methods, which search for programmer-defined date variables, Millennium CrossCheck for PL/I examines legacy source code for standard mathematical operations that yield errors when the calendar moves from 1999 to 2000, and beyond. This unique analytical method eliminates false negatives because every math operation and logical compare is checked.

Millennium CrossCheck for PL/I is both fast and easy to use. Millions of lines of code can be evaluated in days. In field tests, one programmer on one PC used Millennium CrossCheck to validate 600,000 lines of code in eight hours. The tool runs on a variety of PC platforms and provides a simple, easy-to-learn user interface and procedures. Training is completed in four hours or less. Millennium CrossCheck for PL/I allows the user to input both the renovated and original source code, or just the renovated code for analysis.

Unlike most independent verification and validation, which require customers to employ a team of vendor-supplied consultants in support of the tool, Millennium CrossCheck allows organizations to control the process. The product can be used either by in-house staff at the customer site, without consulting support, or in Data Integrity's factory with dii Y2K service consultants.

ABOUT DATA INTEGRITY

Data Integrity, Inc., Waltham, Mass., provides the most powerful Year 2000 remediation software on the market today. Its patented Millennium Solution tool set represents a major departure from conventional Y2K approaches, delivering far more accurate diagnosis and less disruptive remediation of legacy system code. According to industry analyst firm Aberdeen Group, "(Data Integrity's)...tool set features superior accuracy, speed, and reduces testing time by making fewer changes to code. In a world full of over-hype, and late-to-market Y2K panaceas, this solution seems `too good to be true.' However, Aberdeen's research indicates that Data Integrity's tools are as good as they seem. Users report lightning fast assessments and remediations, and very high success rates in code conversion."