Re: The 4th Dimension - Time - Day light savings.

Thanks for the reply. But I still believe Oracle should provide functionality to access the information in a similar fashion to the Javascript Date object. If the OS doesn't support the functionality then functions can return nulls or whatever is suitable. It's then up to the user to choose an OS that can support the functionality. I expect this short coming in DOS or Windows 3.1. I know NT and Windows 95 can do it and I would expect any modern OS worth it's salt to as well.

I'm just surprised this isn't a bigger problem. As I said previously, what happens to tables that store transaction time when the clocks are put back. Times will simply overlap. There must be cases were this is important???

Keith Jamieson wrote:

> sysdate takes its time from the operating system. Under unix, there are various ways of implementing the time, some with daylight saving and some without. So, for unix anyway, it depends on how your sys admin has configured your machine.
>
> Mike Burden wrote:
>
> > It's funny how worked up we get about year 2000 and the Euro affecting
> > programs but you don't here much about time zones and day light saving
> > issues. Presumably these have been with us for so long we just accept
> > them. This subject is quite complex and I don't think much thought goes
> > in to it. I recently ran test scripts using Javascript in Netscape 4 and
> > IE 4 and the same code produced different results so one must be wrong.
> > IE4 was correct. Netscape was way off assuming a two hour day light
> > saving. If they can't get it right what chance do we have.
> >
> > Anyway the problem.
> >
> > Does SYSDATE take into account day light difference. In other words does
> > it always store the date as a say UTC value and only convert to local
> > time when formatting to character or does it just store the value
> > returned from the OS.
> >
> > If it just uses the local time what happens when the clocks are put back
> > an hour? Any programs using a timestamp will suddenly have transactions
> > that overlap.
> >
> > I'm concerned because there seems to be no functions relating to UTC or
> > GMT or local times.
> >
> > NEW_TIME seems to be the only function available but I don't see how I
> > can use this for daylight savings in England. For example, If I'm using
> > transaction times in Germany and need to display them in local time in
> > England how to I do it?. If I use NEW_TIME to convert to GMT will this
> > take into account British Summer time????
>
>
Received on Thu Feb 25 1999 - 09:58:47 CST