Converting Historical Data to UTC

When you enable the global time zone feature, you need to convert any historical (non-UTC) time data to UTC. Perform applicable tasks in this topic if you are upgrading from a Siebel deployment of a prior version that did not use UTC, or if you have decided to convert an existing non-UTC implementation to UTC. For the details for performing this task, see Process of Converting Historical Data to UTC.

See also Guidelines for Both UTC and Non-UTC Deployments.

Converting historical data helps ensure that existing date-time values are consistent with the global time zone logic. The global time zone feature stores date-time values in the database adjusted to UTC time. If you do not convert it, then your historical data will be incorrect for a UTC deployment.

For more information about how the global time zone feature processes date-time data in UTC, see About UTC Data Conversion.

Although enabling UTC is optional, it is recommended that you perform the following procedures immediately after upgrading to the current Siebel release. If you have upgraded a non-UTC deployment, then you must perform the conversion steps described here before creating any new UTC date-time data, unless you have set the Universal Time Coordinated system preference to False. For more information, see Guidelines for Both UTC and Non-UTC Deployments.

The tasks in this topic run the UTC conversion utility from the Database Configuration Wizard. For more information about running the Database Configuration Wizard, see Siebel Installation Guide and Siebel Database Upgrade Guide.

Before beginning to convert historical data to UTC, you must upgrade your development and production environments to the current Siebel release. For more information, see Siebel Database Upgrade Guide.

Before you run the UTC conversion utility, drop all of the database triggers. You can re-create or re-enable the triggers after the UTC conversion is complete.

Caution: If you are preparing external data such as activities or appointments to be brought into a Siebel database using Siebel EIM or Siebel EAI, then you must modify the time stamp for each individual record to be consistent with UTC. This task is the customer’s responsibility, and must be performed before the data is imported into the Siebel database. For each record, the updated time stamp must be based on the applicable UTC offset. The offset must take into account both the time zone offset from UTC (for the appointment’s location) and any applicable daylight savings time (DST) offset from the standard time zone that will be in effect (for the appointment’s calendar date).