Looking At the Past And Future

In this edition, we take a look at the past, and then explore some possibly scary issues for the future.

It's been almost 18 years between the two editions of the world's favourite mainframe for beginners book, "What On Earth is a Mainframe". In our first management article, we look at what has changed with the mainframe and z/OS that would warrant a change in a beginner's book. In our remaining two articles, we look at the Y2K38 and Y2K42 problems: new Y2K issues that are coming to mainframe sites. Our second management article looks at the UNIX 2038 problem, and shows how it is also a problem for mainframes and z/OS.

Finally in our opinion article. David Stephens discusses whether we need to worry about the 2038 and 2042 problems: they won't occur for over a decade.

We hope you enjoy this issue.

management: Mainframe Changes In The Past 18 Years

Last year, the second edition of the world's favourite mainframe for beginners' book, "What On Earth is a Mainframe" became available. In the 18 years between releases, there have been a lot of changes to the mainframe and z/OS. Let's look at the big ones: those that would affect a beginner's book.

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management: Is z/OS In Trouble in 2038?

On January 19th, 2038, any program storing a UNIX timestamp as a 32-bit signed integer will have a problem: it will think it is 1901. The reason is simple: the number of seconds since 01-Jan-1970 will no longer fit into that signed integer. UNIX users are well aware of this 'Y2K38' problem. But z/OS users are also at risk. Let's see how.

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opinion: Do We Need to Care About Y2K38 or Y2K42 Yet?

In the next 16 years, z/OS users will face two problems similar to the Y2K problem of 2000. On 19-Jan-2038, the Y2K38 problem will hit anyone using a signed 32-bit integer to hold a UNIX timestamp (more on this here). On 17-Dec-2042, anyone using the 64-bit STCK date format will have similar problems (Y2K42).

But that's 12-16 years away. Do we really need to care yet?

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