Problems with dates newer than 2038 - Y2K38 Issue
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Problems with dates newer than 2038 - Y2K38 Issue

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Article ID: 385676

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Updated On:

Products

CA Service Desk Manager CA Service Management - Service Desk Manager

Issue/Introduction

In date fields SDM cannot handle dates greater than 2038-01-20.  Users cannot select a date past Jan 18, 2038.

Environment

CA Service Desk Manager, releases up to 17.4

Cause

This is a known limitation of representing the date in UNIX format, which was originally designed to use signed 32 bit integer data type. 

Resolution

The correction involves at minimum, converting the data type for the date fields over to a 64 bit integer.  However, CA Service Desk operates on a 32 bit architecture; in order for it to support 64 bit integer data types, it would require an architectural change.  Such a change is slated for the forthcoming major 17.5 release of Service Desk.  

As 17.5 is in active development as of this writing (Apr, 2025), an ETA for its release is to be determined.

Additional Information

The Year 2038 problem (also called Y2038, Epochalypse, Y2k38, or Unix Y2K) relates to representing time in many digital systems as the number of seconds passed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970 and storing it as a signed 32-bit integer.  For instance, 1745165700 seconds is the number of seconds that has elapsed since Jan 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC, which works out to April 20, 2025, 16:15:00 UTC

In the original UNIX date implementation, a limitation exists in which it is not possible to encode times after 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038, which carries a UNIX time value of 2147483647, and is the highest value possible for a signed 32 bit integer data type.  An attempt to go past this specific limit of the data type results in an overflow error that will present the date as Dec 13, 1901. 

This is a common problem across many applications besides Service Desk, which rely on UNIX time and operate via the original 32 bit data type, and will also require a similar update to support 64 bit integer data types.