Like the Internet hype, most of these stories, articles and books are generated by someone who wants to sell you something, in this case a Year 2000 solution. Most legacy applications have databases that were designed back in the early days when disk drives were so expensive that saving one or two bytes in a record length was a good idea, especially if the file contained a couple of million records. The Method I have created a method of addressing the Year 2000 problem that combines creativity, skill and whole lot of hard work. For every physical file there are programs that put the data into the files and there are other programs that take the data from the files. It sounds over simplified, but it's true.
Computers flow data the way a heating system flows water.
To make matters worse, there are thousands of year pipes, all flowing in different directions and going to different places but, for now, Ill keep it simple with only one year pipe. In order to fix the problem, you have to identify exactly where the pipe goes and what it does. Then decide if whether to expand the year pipe or add a century pipe. There is good news, however. There are no leaks.