Software Testing as Applied to the Year 2000 Computer Problem

Maintenance is an important step in the development of software and one in which deserves to be examined with rigor. Because testing is also important to software development, and a majority of development is spent in the maintenance phase, then it is quite apparent that testing software in the maintenance step is crucial to the development of software. The principles of testing computer software are examined and specifically its implementation in the maintenance phase. From here, these principles will be applied to the Year 2000 problem, which consumed much of the computer industry’s attention for several years around the turn of the century, to demonstrate how testing took place to validify the compliancy of software. Since the Year 2000 glitch is a prime example of how software maintenance is carried out, it will be used as an illustration of testing during software maintenance. To apply this even farther, a case study is done on the Year 2000 that was carried out on the Reactivity Measurement Analysis Software from Framatone Technologies. The testing principle discussed will be seen clearly in the application of the test study