Understanding Time Zone Maintenance

Oracle delivers a subset of time zone data including information about daylight saving time observances in the time zone table. Typically, you will access time zone data through the PSTIMEZONE view, which shows current entries from the PSTIMEZONEDEFN table. The PSTIMEZONEDEFN table has an effective datetime field, allowing historical time zone definitions to be stored. The Oracle-provided subset of time zone data is consistent with current law at the time of the PeopleTools GA release. Oracle does not provide patches or updates to this time zone data once it is released—for example, to bring it up to date with recently enacted legislation.

You are, therefore, responsible for three tasks:

• Create any time zone definitions required by your global operations but not included in the Oracle-provided data.

• Ensure that each time zone has an entry with a PTEFFDTTM of 1900-01-01 00:00:00, plus entries for any regulatory changes you want to track, in the PSTIMEZONEDEFN table.

• Update time zone definitions whenever local regulations change the definition for a time zone; for example, the daylight saving time start or end date.

• Ensure that each time zone ID you added has an entry in the Time Zone Mapping Table to map to an IANA time zone.