Re: Oracle Timezone question

Ed Stevens wrote:

> Platform: Oracle 9.2 on Solaris 8.
>
> We have a packaged app that running in two U.S. locations, both in
> the Central time zone. The db is located in Mountain time zone. The
> only date/time datatype in the application's schema is DATE. It is
> also rumored that a lot of the application date/time data is actually
> stored in VARCHAR2 or NUMBER columns. Users are complaining about
> having to mentally adjust when dealing with times. Managent (as
> always!) is looking for a magic parm I can set to make the problem go
> away.
>
> I've read all of the relevant docs on tahiti, as well as several
> promising threads from the ng archives. Quite frankly, I'm having
> trouble getting my head around it all, but it appears that there is no
> way out short of going into the app itself. Resetting the time or
> timezone in Solaris itself is not an option.
>
> Can anyone give me a reasonably concise description of what our
> options are? Meanwhile, I'm continuing to re-re-read all the hits I
> get from searching tahiti for 'timezone'.
>
> Thanks.

Management made a bad decision by taking the software salesman's word for things rather than doing due diligence and testing. Saved a dollar yesterday ... get to spend 10X as much today if the license even allows it.

There is no quick fix. In fact given it is a packaged app there may be no solution other than junking it.

There is a reason why large companies bring in independent consultants to oversee and advise on the purchase of software apps. We tend to ask the hard questions and are not impressed by projector-ware.

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
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