Re: How to find out the current time zone in Oracle?

On Fri, 31 Aug 2001 11:58:57 GMT, Benoit Losier <blosier_at_shareline.com> wrote:

>I need to convert my date to GMT time using the NEW_TIME function but
>can't seem to find a way to get the current database time zone.
>

You can't, at least not directly. To calculate the GMT time once you have the "displacement" of your current timezone (read on), you can use date arithmetic to find it.

Say for example you're "+10" time zone:

select to_char((sysdate-(10/24)),'yyyymmddhh24miss') from dual; gives you the GMT.

If it was -10, then you'd sum instead of subtracting. (you *know* how to do that in a single operation, don't you?)

>Our development site has a different time zone then our live sites so I
>can't hard code the time zone in my script.
>

Create a table where you store the time zone of the instance, manually. Then just read from there when needed. Populate the table as part of moving to or installing the database in a new site. Works for me.

Cheers
Nuno Souto
nsouto_at_optushome.com.au.nospam Received on Fri Aug 31 2001 - 07:37:38 CDT