How Siebel Sets Created Time (Doc ID 529944.1)

Goal

1. How does the created and last_upd timestamp get generated?

Customer is using UTC time.  If the application retrieves the time from the Database server, then how does the Siebel server display the timestamp values as bind variables in the SCCObjMgr_enu log for the Insert and Update statements?

2. Customer is also seeking the following details:

More information on what system calls are made to get the timestamps and how the application calculates the UTC time when a time is stored in the future.

Example:
User is in New York (Eastern Time)
Siebel Server is in California (Pacific Time)
DB Server is in California using UTC or GMT time.

Today, Jan 17th, the user creates an appointment for 3/15/07 at 3:00PM Eastern Time.

User's machine time = 01/17/2007 5:15:03 PM EST (users machine is fast)
Siebel Server machine time = 01/17/2007 2:14:33 PM PST
Database Server machine time = 01/17/2007 10:14:33 PM GMT

Siebel evaluates the users preference for their Timezone, which is Eastern.

Customer believes that Siebel does not use the User's machine time. They think it uses the Siebel Server time to figure out whether it is in Daylight Time or Standard Time. This determines how many hours to add/subtract to be in UTC time. Since today is Standard Time, Siebel will add 5 hours to 3/15/07 3:00PM and stores 3/15/07 8:00PM UTC time in the database. (5 hours because the user is in Eastern Standard Time)

When the user's appointment is due, it will be Daylight time, so Siebel will read the record from the database as UTC of 3/15/07 8:00PM and it will subtract 4 hours since the user is in Eastern Daylight Time. So the application will display 3/15/07 3:00PM EDT.

Customer would like to verify that this is the method that the Siebel server uses to store and retrieve times? If not, they would like to get the set of steps Siebel takes to store and retrieve dates.

Solution

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