Daylight Savings Time Change - Not "automagic"

[LeftHander]

If you haven't heard yet...

Daylight Saving Time is changing. On March 11 this year we will set the clocks ahead. Rather the end of April...big deal? Maybe not for your clock or wristwatch. But for tens of thousands of servers, applications with embedded JAVA it is a big deal. Without patching the servers will not "automagially" know what time it is.

Implications are that JAVA based applications and middle ware that are unpatched and systems that do not recognize the new DST rules will incorrectly make time based calculations after March 11.

IT departments are scrambling across the country as well as software vendors to provide support for DST2007 compliance.

Many systems track time by counting seconds from a specific date, then local rules are applied by client applications to display the correct time for the user location. Other applications can store data as timestamps with embedded time zone information requiring mass data updates. (Some Oracle 10g databases for instance)

Java installations, JRE, JVM etc. hold time zone information with in the JAVA implementation and these files need to be upgraded. Some application require specific version of the JAVA runtime environment and these JAVA implementations will require patching.

Embedded controllers may not have the rule changes and thus systems will be activated at improper times based on the DST changes.

The DST changes have caught many vendors off guard as evident by rapid changes to Tech notes as issues are discovered.

Stupid law. Stupid time change. IT people if you haven't yet, do your checking for DST2007 compliance as errors are bound to creep in over time.

[meegbear]

1. Link?

[LeftHander]

5. I wrote that....some links

Google DST 2007 and read gobs of info from SUN, IBM, Oracle....etc...here are a few

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/timezone/dst2007.mspx?#EBF

http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Intl/USDST/

http://www.devx.com/dbzone/Article/30501

[meegbear]

8. Thanks ...

My shop works with Java 1.4; I forwarded the Sun link to my upper, in case he doesn't know.

Development machines fine, but this could mess up our production machines.

[toddaa]

29. Download the TZUpdater utility for 1.4

Sun has a utility you can run to automatically update your runtime to be compliant. http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Yes, some software hasn't been updated yet. Not a problem for my mainframes.

[redqueen]

3. Now I want to go find out why they're changing it.

Strange.

[KatyaR]

37. It's the administration's answer to the energy crisis--

supposedly we'll save LOTS of money if we extend the DST. Pure bullshit at its finest.

What this means for me is 4 less weeks of sleep. I have a horrible time sleeping during DST--I need more nighttime!

[NMDemDist2]

4. whose brilliant idea was that and why? I lived in AZ for 9 years and

the whole DST thing wasn't done. It was weird to actually have to set clocks back this fall for the first time

why are they doing it?

[onecent]

6. Amen to that, born and raised here in Northern Indiana, never changed

a clock in first 18 years of my life. Still can't figure out why it's done.

[Hosnon]

19. Franklin first proposed it to save candle wax and therefore save money. It

is done so that we are awake at the same time the sun is up.

[AngryAmish]

10. Because DST is great

It allows more daylight in the afternoon and evening as opposed to in the early AM when everyone is sleeping. It expands my opportunities to golf greatly.

[sinkingfeeling]

15. And I get my first glimpse of daylight at lunch time, because it's dark when I go to work.

[newburgh]

7. Shades of 2000- uhoh- the sky is falling! the sky is falling!

Don't mind me, I'm still bitter. I fell for it then and missed the perfect opportunity to drive around Cuba as a non-tourist.

[LeftHander]

9. 2000 issues were real...IT people prevented systems from failing

Thanks to a lot of hard work by many many people.

This is actually almost as bad....having to update nearly every server and numerous JAVA installations is not small task.

That is what IT people do...

[ieoeja]

20. In one way it's worse.

We spent YEARS preparing for Y2K. We've had only MONTHS to prepare for this one which is why everyone is scrambling.

On the other hand ... this isn't going to impact nearly as much. Simple business applications are going to use the system time. It's only operating systems and middleware that may run into timing issues. And even most of those errors wouldn't be critical.

[TahitiNut]

22. Just a SMOP. Funny how the best work looks like nothing at all.

People are clueless when it comes to good IT. They get all impressed with the buggy stuff that's awkward and difficult to use ... and ignore the stuff that's so well-done it looks "easy."

Squeaky wheels get grease and squeaky IT gets (undeserved) attention.

"Great engineering makes it look simple." (I don't know who said it, but it's been true for decades.)

The Y2K effort was doomed to be a "so what?" ... because the best success imaginable would be that NOTHING happened. That's why so much IT is shit - the people doing it are codependent - and love to be 'needed' every time it needs yet another 'tweak.' In nearly 40 years in the business, I saw this more often than I could possibly count. Quality IT doesn't serve codependent egos.

[lukasahero]

23. Yup

People laugh about the big Y2K scare as if it was just some joke. Little do they realize how many people worked their butts off to make sure they could enjoy that perspective.

I worked at the gas company in 1999. Know what happens when the gas company's software f*cks up? Things go 'boom'.

This is a minor hassle in comparison although working for a major financial services company getting the actual time that the market closes right is a bit of a big deal.

[lilymidnite]

30. I worked for years preparing for Y2K

... and sat on my butt onsite at midnight that night watching for problems in my databases.
You wouldn't have wanted to see the 911 system fail.

Same now. 'Just a little big in the java code ... nothing more.' Wrong. The problem is that no-one knows all of the possible problems ... and java is embedded in everything ... EVERYTHING.

I thought the people who over-reacted to Y2K were pretty funny. There were real problems, and good IT people prevented a lot of bad things from happening.

Like many people I like DST, but in this case, I don't relish the idea of biking to work at 9 AM in the pitch dark. I wish * would have left it as it was.

[lukasahero]

35. Right there with you

As everyone else was merrily ringing in the New Year, I was holed up in a bunker with fingers crossed that nothing would actually happen. I was only too glad to have "wasted" my time there that night.

I go to work in the dark and usually leave for home in the dark. I'm looking forward to summer when, regardless of DST, it will still (probably) be light when I go home. :hi:

[lilymidnite]

11. My work days are consumed with fixing this 'bug'

Thanks a lot, W. What a PIA.

[lukasahero]

17. Ditto that

We've been working on it for months.

[Lex]

12. Should we start buying our rations now?

:P

[LeftHander]

14. yes..go shopping if you want to....if it makes you feel safer...

Get some duct tape and plastic while you are at it.

[kath]

36. Don't forget to tuna and powdered milk to hide under the bed!

[terrya]

13. I had to call IBM about our AIX O/S on this stupid shit.

It's arbitrary and it's a fucking nuisance.

But thanks for posting the heads-up on this.

[schmuls]

16. Oue MIT guy said they are doing it 3 weeks earlier this year - why?

[ieoeja]

24. You have to ask?

Something incredibly stupid is occurring. It will cause lots of grief. There appears to be no reason for doing it. It is being done by the United States and ONLY the United States while the rest of the world refuses to go along with it.

You get one and only one guess as to what imbecile came up with this one.

Heck, you only get one LETTER to make your guess.

[schmuls]

25. Is the answer "I"? :^\

[schmuls]

28. Oops! I mis-read your part about one letter. Would the answer

to what imbecile came up with it be "W" by any chance? he he he

And why did * com up with it? Gas-saving, elections, or some other excuse to cover his cowardly ass?

[Hosnon]

18. Stupid time change? Daylight savings is very eco-friendly. Why waste fossil fuel

lighting the country when the sun can do the trick for us?

Our clocks should be set so that most of us rise with the sun. Why waste those hours of sunlight?

[MissB]

27. I think that was the reason given for shifting it this year.

[MadHound]

32. Umm, it's not like we're actually adding an hour of sunlight

We're not turning the earth forward, just out clocks. We will continue to get the same amount of sunlight no matter what time our clocks say.

[Hosnon]

34. Of course we're not turning the earth forward. But it saves energy.

Imagine it is opposite day and humans are awake at night (8 p.m.) and go to bed when the sun goes up (8 a.m.). How much more energy would we use to light/heat our daily lives? Now, move the clock back hour by hour until we are awake during the day (8 a.m.) and go to bed at night (8 p.m.).

See the difference?

Humans should be awake right when the sun rises in order to maximize its light/heat/energy.

We are adding an hour of sunlight if we were previously sleeping through that hour because our schedules dictated that the sun rose at 5 but no one could/would/wanted to get up before 6. Push the clocks an hour ahead and we get that hour.

[azmouse]

21. I'm glad we don't change the clocks at all in AZ.

[KamaAina]

33. We don't in HI either -- it's the rest of you who do who screw everything up!

We will soon be six hours behind the East Coast. My Mom lives on the East Coast. This basically precludes any sort of contact other than email, except on weekends.

It even screws up our TV schedules; cable channels run on Pacific time, so we will be getting Sex & The City at 6 o'clock!

[roamer65]

26. Not a big deal.

If the system doesn't change automatically, you just reset date/time manually. Older OS versions will not have patches for it and will require manual change.

[muriel_volestrangler]

31. If all programs and operating systems have been written well, that is

During the 90s, I worked with some middleware that coordinated clocks on distributed computers ('DCE', for those who want to know). European daylight savings time normally changes on a different weekend from American. When we were testing, the systems stopped working completely during the week in between. The only option was to set all the connected computers to an American time zone - which wouldn't be acceptable in a live system. Someone had, somewhere deep in the code, hard-programmed the American change dates. And if one program has been written well, and another hasn't, you may get real problems. This kind of thing does need testing, and enough notice to get patches for everthing involved.