Question

In oracle, is the named timezone always stored?

I have been testing this column within our system, and in some places the timestamp is shown as:

26-FEB-09 11.36.25.390713 AM +13:00 

but other times it’s:

26-FEB-09 11.36.25.390713 AM Pacific/Auckland 

If the value is being stored as the former, does that mean the actual timezone is not being stored?

I worry because if a future date is stored with only an offset we might not be able to determine the actual time in the original timezone, because you can determine a offset from a timezone, but not vice versa.

Thanks

Answer 1

I’ve found that setting the TimeZone and format within ODP.NET when a connection is opened seems to solve this problem:

OracleGlobalization info = conn.GetSessionInfo(); info.TimeZone = 'Pacific/Auckland'; info.TimeStampFormat = 'DD-MON-YYYY HH:MI:SS.FF AM'; info.TimeStampTZFormat = 'DD-MON-YYYY HH:MI:SS.FF AM TZR'; conn.SetSessionInfo(info);