ALERT - Potentially Serious Problem with DST Patches for PST8PDT Timezone

Oracle-l list,  

I just got confirmation from Oracle Support of a new problem I found with the timezone patches. I've been told a note/alert will be released on Metalink within a few days once they've worked out the details, but here is what I think I know so far:  

DISCLAIMER: This is for informational purposes only - act on it at your own risk. I recommend waiting for official instructions from Oracle before taking any action.  

In the v3 and v4 timezone files that have been released recently, the PST8PDT timezone has been added as a "real" timezone as opposed to just an alias for another timezone as it was in v2. This means that Oracle stores the internal timezone ID differently. The timezdif.csv files that were shipped with the updated utltzuv2.sql scripts erroneously omitted PST8PDT and the other v2 aliased timezones in the list of affected timezones to check for. The net result is that if you have any TSTZ data with the PST8PDT timezone or any of the other newly added v3 timezones*, then you need to back it up (copy to varchar2 column) before installing the new timezone files and then restore afterwards and this is regardless of the timeframe.  

I haven't done any testing yet to find out exactly what happens with these timezones if you don't backup/restore them before & after the patch, but I plan to do that soon and will post my findings. I will also post an update with the Metalink note number as soon as they tell me about it.  

Regards,
Brandon  

*New timezones added in v3:
EST
MST
HST
EST5EDT
CST6CDT
MST7MDT
PST8PDT
America/Indiana/Vincennes
America/Indiana/Petersburg  

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