The 4th Dimension - Time - Day light savings.

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 Wed Feb 24 1999 - 04:51:34 CST