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Re: Time (and time zones) in Oracle 8i

From: Alex Filonov <afilonov_at_pro-ns.net>
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 02:39:08 GMT
Message-ID: <94g6gc$i8p$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Here is little help for you.
This is extract from Oracle documentarion, SQL language reference:

NEW_TIME  Syntax

          NEW_TIME(d, z1, z2)

 Purpose
 Returns the date and time in time zone z2 when date and time in time  zone z1 are d. The arguments
 z1 and z2 can be any of these text strings:

               AST
               ADT
                               Atlantic Standard or Daylight Time
               BST
               BDT
                               Bering Standard or Daylight Time
               CST
               CDT
                               Central Standard or Daylight Time
               EST
               EDT
                               Eastern Standard or Daylight Time
               GMT
                               Greenwich Mean Time
               HST
               HDT
                               Alaska-Hawaii Standard Time or Daylight
				 Time.
               MST
               MDT
                               Mountain Standard or Daylight Time
               NST
                               Newfoundland Standard Time
               PST
               PDT
                               Pacific Standard or Daylight Time
               YST
               YDT
                               Yukon Standard or Daylight Time



In article <93amf3$jr$1_at_slb3.atl.mindspring.net>,   "gnn_gnn" <gnn_gnn_at_hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi:
>
> I am having some trouble getting a clear understanding of time and
 time
> zones in Oracle (8i). There are functions to transform date-times
 from one
> time zone to another, etc., but if I want to load data with a
 date-time
> format string like 'YYYY-DD-MM HH24:MI:SS', there is no timezone
 information
> for the template string. It seems like all times entered are assumed
 to be
> in the Oracle server's time zone? What does this mean for enterprises
 with
> servers in different time zones? (Although I don't have this, I am
> curious). This is true for SQLLDR as well. There is no way to tell
 the
> timezone for the date-times.
>
> With the above in mind, and given that Oracle is used in many global
> enterprise databases around the world, how does one have remote sites
 do
> something like log events, and have users perform queries that do
 date/time
> boundary searches correctly? For instance, if something happens at
 3:00pm
> in California, and something happens at noon in DC the same day, a
 temporal
> query SHOULD find both of those events occured at the same time. But
 if the
> CA log just enters "3:00pm" and the DC log enters "12:00pm", it won't
 work
> (will it??). Even if Oracle keeps time like unix, seconds since Jan 1
 <pic
> a year>, that IMPLIES a timezone, does it not?
>
> It seems like it is up to the application(s) to all convert to some
 standard
> time zone (Zulu, EST, or whatever) and I would think this is exactly
 what
> one does NOT want. It means you count on all the distributed sites
 doing
> the conversion properly, etc. It would seem that each app should
 enter
> "xx:xx TZ" where TZ is a time zone, and let the server convert it to
 it's
> time, (or zulu, etc.)
>
> Am I right or wrong? How is this type of situation normally handled?
 Where
> can I find out more? My searches have not come up with anything
 definitive.
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>
>

Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/ Received on Sun Jan 21 2001 - 20:39:08 CST

Original text of this message

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