For reasons mysterious to me, world governments apparently like to change their timezones on a regular basis. If your E-Business Suite Release 11i or 12 environment has been configured to support Daylight Saving Time (DST) or international time zones, it's important that you keep your timezone definition files up-to-date. They were last changed in February 2009, and they've been updated once again: DSTv11 is now available and certified with the E-Business Suite.
Is Your Environment Affected?
When a country or region changes DST rules or their time zone definitions, your Oracle E-Business Suite environment will require patching if:
- Your Oracle E-Business Suite environment is located in the affected country or region OR
- Your Oracle E-Business Suite environment is located outside the affected country or region but you conduct business or have customers or suppliers in the affected country or region.
We last discussed the DSTv10 patches on this blog. The latest "DSTv11" timezone definition file is cumulative and includes all DST changes released in earlier time zone definitions. DSTv11 includes changes to the following timezones since the DSTv10 release:
-
Africa/Cairo
Africa/Casablanca
Africa/Tunis
America/Adak
America/Anchorage
America/Argentina/Cordoba
America/Argentina/Jujuy
America/Argentina/Mendoza
America/Argentina/Salta
America/Argentina/San_Luis
America/Atka
America/Bogota
America/Cordoba
America/Eirunepe
America/Havana
America/Jujuy
America/Juneau
America/Lima
America/Managua
America/Mendoza
America/Miquelon
America/Nome
America/Noronha
America/Porto_Acre
America/Resolute
America/Rio_Branco
America/Rosario
America/Santiago
America/Thule
America/Yakutat
Antarctica/Palmer
Asia/Amman
Asia/Baghdad
Asia/Baku
Asia/Choibalsan
Asia/Damascus
Asia/Gaza
Asia/Hovd
Asia/Istanbul
Asia/Karachi
Asia/Novosibirsk
Asia/Samarkand
Asia/Tashkent
Asia/Ulaanbaatar
Asia/Ulan_Bator
Brazil/Acre
Brazil/DeNoronha
Chile/Continental
Chile/EasterIsland
Cuba
Egypt
Europe/Chisinau
Europe/Istanbul
Europe/Kaliningrad
Europe/Kiev
Europe/Samara
Europe/Simferopol
Europe/Tiraspol
Europe/Vienna
Europe/Warsaw
Indian/Mauritius
Pacific/Easter
Poland
Turkey
US/Alaska
US/Aleutian
What Patches Are Required?
In case you haven't been following our previous time zone or Daylight Saving Time (DST)-related articles, international timezone definitions for E-Business Suite environments are captured in a series of patches for the database and application tier servers in your environment. The actual scope and number of patches that need to be applied depend on whether you've applied previous DST or timezone-related patches. Some sysadmins have remarked to me that it generally takes more time to read the various timezone documents than it takes to apply these patches, but your mileage may vary.
We've published the following Notes which identify the various components in your E-Business Suite environment that may need DST patches:
- Complying with Daylight Saving Time (DST) and Time Zone Rule Changes in E-Business Suite 12 (Note 563019.1)
- Complying with Daylight Saving Time (DST) and Time Zone Rule Changes in E-Business Suite 11i (Note 458452.1)
What Have Your Experiences Been?
DST patching was a hot topic a few years ago, so much so that we convened some emergency web-based seminars for customers to clarify out the requirements for E-Business Suite environments. Since then, it seems like time zone patching has become more predictable and better-documented, and I haven't heard about any recent customer escalations in this area. I'd be interested in hearing about your experiences lately in keeping your Apps environment up-to-date with time zone patches; feel free to drop me an email or post a comment here with your thoughts.
