Re: Oracle and DST changes

Just got assigned to evaluate all layers of our applications for the DST change ... I'm voting against any politicians that voted for this next election.

We have Oracle 9.2.0.6 and several varieties of 10g. We're using the JVM in all databases, but I've found no use of time zone columns or procedures, outside the 10g data dictionary fields. We already planned on moving everything to 9.2.0.8 since we'll need to be there for the Jan 07 CPU patches and this will take care of the JVM issue. 10g instances will get the JVM bug patch.

As for the timezone patch, I'm inclined to update all Oracle homes and clients, although finding all the clients that need updating will be difficult. I understand the Oracle documentation to mean that if we're not using TZ stuff now, we can roll the patches out on our schedule, and I'd rather get it in place before somebody starts using it and forces a system wide simultaneous patching.

We have actually already seen an issue in an application that posts future effective dates, using a midnight timestamp. Different dates in March are displayed for different engineers, as some of them had the Microsoft patch for XP and some didn't. The users with the new patch are recording incorrect data and the fix from the vendor hasn't been 'officially' published yet - TBD end of this week. Fortunately, the XP patch has not been widely distributed at our site yet.

Also have Oracle AS, but only in test at this point. Several of our java apps are releasing patches, and all of our apps using WebLogic are impacted as well. I'd recommend checking into any supporting applications as well. (job scheduling software for example) As a bonus issue, we have facilities in Mexico, and Mexico will no longer be using US time zones. There is a new time zone for them and all servers and clients will need to be adjusted.

Still researching, but I expect to be very busy next month ...

Robyn

On 1/23/07, Mercadante, Thomas F (LABOR) <Thomas.Mercadante_at_labor.state.ny.us> wrote:
>

> The Oracle notes also suggests that if you have JVM installed that you
> upgrade it. I have JVM installed in the database but only because our Curam
> applications calls it for transaction processing. My gut feeling is that I
> don't need to upgrade.
>
>
>
> Any thoughts?
>
>
>
> I also agree about not patching anything if I'm not using Time Zone data
> types. We only have one 10.2.0.2 database and I'm not too worried about it.
>
>
>
> The big pain in the arse is upgrading all of the Oracle clients. Hundreds
> of desktops to upgrade.
>

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