I surmise that career politicians and government bureaucrats have good reasons for changing their countries’ timezones. There must be some tangible benefit of doing it, given how frequently they like to do this. So, here we go again, with
yet-another round of international timezone changes for your E-Business Suite environments.
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 DSTv7 patches on this blog. The latest “DSTv10” timezone definitions include changes to the following timezones since the DSTv7 release:
Africa/Casablanca
America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires
America/Argentina/Catamarca
America/Argentina/ComodRivadavia
America/Argentina/Cordoba
America/Argentina/Jujuy
America/Argentina/La_Rioja
America/Argentina/Mendoza
America/Argentina/Rio_Gallegos
America/Argentina/San_Juan
America/Argentina/Tucuman
America/Argentina/Ushuaia
America/Buenos_Aires
America/Campo_Grande
America/Catamarca
America/Cordoba
America/Cuiaba
America/Havana
America/Jujuy
America/Mendoza
America/Rosario
America/Santiago
America/Sao_Paulo
Asia/Choibalsan
Asia/Damascus
Asia/Gaza
Asia/Karachi, 2002008
Brazil/East
Chile/Continental
Chile/EasterIsland
Cuba
Indian/Mauritius
Pacific/Easter
What Patches Are Required?
In case you haven’t been following our previous timezone 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 (Metalink Note 563019.1)
- Complying with Daylight Saving Time (DST) and Time Zone Rule Changes in E-Business Suite 11i (Metalink 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 timezone 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 timezone patches; feel free to drop me
an email or post a comment here with your thoughts.