Which PowerHouse brings Y2K relief? Cognos customers could well have been asking that after taking delivery of PowerHouse version 7.29C in September, which was promised to include a Year 2000-compliant version of Quiz, the omnipresent report writer in Cognos’ fourth generation language. Roy Brown of Affirm, which supplies the QED MPE-based manufacturing solution for HP 3000s in Europe, reported that 2000-compliant might be less than a customer needs for Year 2000 work. It turns out that Cognos did not include the ability to define a century pivot point in the 7.29C version of Quiz. To set a pivot point for 1900/2000 dates you need version 8.19, which Cognos was set to ship in the first week of October. As for the 2000-compliant version 7.29C, Brown said “Turns out they mean that it handles the date intrinsics correctly for Y2K, so it needs TZ and all that good stuff — if you have explicitly coded for it. And maybe the programs get the 19 or 20 for ADDCENTURY at runtime instead of compile time. But no pivot point. So now I learn I must make a distinction between Y2K-Compliant 7.29C8 (doesn’t actually break in 2000) and Y2K-Friendly 8.19 (supports Y2K implied centuries with the same ease that, say, VPLUS does. I hope.)” Copyright 1998 The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved