This month's issue of the Communications of the ACM (Vol. 41, No. 12, December 1998) focuses on the topic of requirements traceability, which is defined as "the ability to describe and follow the life of a requirement, in both a forward and backward direction, ideally through the whole system's life cycle." The potential benefits of requirements traceability have created a new market of tools and spurred new thinking about software development processes.

Software is becoming such an essential part of modern life that a radical improvement in quality is needed. For example, the doomsayers tell us that we'll wake up the morning after our Y2000 celebrations with overflowing coffee makers, phone bills for century-long calls, unable to get money from ATMs, no TV or radio service, financial market meltdowns, grounded planes and stalled trains, and dozens of other problems. It's enough to make you want to stay in bed.

Though I'm still suffering from the long-term Y2000 blues, two news items on my computer screen brought a smile to my face this morning. The first article indicated that Microsoft has released an upgrade of its version of Java to comply with a federal court's ruling against the company last month. And the second article reported that Sun is about to unveil the details of the next-generation version of the language, known as Java 2.

By now, everyone in the computer field (if not the entire human race) has heard about the acquisition of Netscape by America On Line (AOL), together with the licensing arrangement with Sun Microsystems. We've seen "vision statements" from AOL describing its view of the future, and we've seen dozens of commentaries about the effect that the merger will have on Microsoft, on e-commerce, and on the future of the Internet.

A story in the 26 October issue of Information Week recently caught my eye: entitled "Top IT Secrets," it described a lawsuit filed by Wal-Mart Stores against Amazon.com and Drugstore.com for allegedly raiding its IT staff to gain access to trade secrets.

The 9 November issue of Information Week carried an interesting story entitled "Killer Supply Chains: Six companies are using supply chains to transform the way they do business." The theme of the article was simple and straightforward: "The supply chain is a powerful set of tools and philosophies.

I must have suffered through a news blackout last week on the Internet: I missed Microsoft's earth-shattering decision to rename Windows NT 5.0 to Windows 2000. When I stumbled upon the news while skimming through a pile of trade magazines that accumulated while I was out of town, my first reaction was "Hee haw! Bill, you've got to be kidding!" But I've subsequently concluded that it might turn out to be a significant event after all.

The day of catastrophe in the information era is approaching. Companies as well as government agencies are investing enormous amounts of money for the soft landing of computer-controlled systems in the next century. But the Sanwa Bank in Japan is completely nonchalant about the catastrophic day, which is consuming enormous effort and money. Its secret is in the calendar system that it implemented 30 years ago when it started the first generation of banking systems.