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Is Notes Year 2000 Ready?
From Lotus' Knowledgebase Article#147238:
Lotus Notes is ready for the year 2000. In fact, support for the year 2000 has been part of the Notes architecture from the very beginning of its development. Therefore, all Notes releases, beginning with Release 1.0, fully support all year 2000 date functions, and no human intervention is necessary for Notes to continue functioning correctly when we move into the year 2000.
When discussing the impact of year 2000 dates in Lotus Notes, there are three areas of Notes date functionality to consider. These are:
1. Date entry.
2. Date calculations.
3. Notes server time synchronization.
Below are descriptions of each of these areas and explanations of how Notes handles each:
1. Date entry.
Since Release 1.0 of Notes, it has been possible to enter dates for the year 2000 and beyond simply by typing all four digits of the year. For example, "1 1 2000".
For all Notes releases prior to Release 4.5, if only two digits are typed in for the year, Notes assumes that the user means the date within the base century 1900. For example:
If the date entered is "1 1 20", Notes releases prior to Release 4.5 will internally store the year as "1920".
Beginning in Notes Release 4.5, if only two digits are typed in for the year and the two digits are a value between 50 and 99, then Notes will assume that the year is within the base century 1900. If the two digit year value entered is between 00 and 49, then Notes will assume that the century is base 2000. For example:
If the date entered is "1 1 97", Notes will internally store the year as "1997". If the date entered is "1 1 00", Notes will internally store the year as "2000".
This new feature in Notes Release 4.5 will allow data entry to be more intuitive for users as we move into the next millennium.
The only place where Notes does not make this assumption is with the @Date function. If you enter an @Date formula with a year as two digits, Notes assumes you mean the literal year that is entered. For example, @Date(94;3;16) will evaluate as 03 16 0094, when you probably intended @Date(1994;3;16) which will evaluate as 03 16 94. This is true in all Notes releases, including Notes Release 4.5.
2. Date calculations.
All calculations using pre- and post-year 2000 dates in Notes will execute correctly. Notes' internal TIMEDATE structure stores the dates in such a way that they can be manipulated in formulas in anyway, regardless of the year or any other part of the date.
Notes internally supports up to the year 32767 on 16-bit operating systems (limited by a 15-bit year quantity in our TIME structure), and the year 41247 on 32-bit operating systems (limited by a 24-bit Julian date quantity in our TIMEDATE structure), so it is well prepared not only for the year 2000 but for many millenniums beyond that.
3. Notes server time synchronization.
When a Notes server is started for the first time, it picks up the time from the operating system it is running on and then keeps its own time from then on until the server is brought down again. The Notes server already knows how to manage the year 2000, so it will automatically roll its time from December 31, 1999 at 11:59:59 PM to January 1, 2000 at 12:00:00 AM. The Notes server also knows how to work with leap years and daylight savings time, so both of these will also be handled correctly during the year 2000.