Oracle's Document Concerning 2007 DST Date Changes.

Subject: 	Changes To The North American Time Zones For 2007 Will 
                Affect Existing And New Calendar Meetings
  	Doc ID: 	Note:399739.1 	Type: 	ALERT
  	Last Revision Date: 	08-FEB-2007 	Status: 	PUBLISHED

In this Document
  Description
  Likelihood of Occurrence
  Possible Symptoms
  Workaround or Resolution
  Patches

Applies to:
Oracle CorporateTime - Version: 5.4
Oracle Collaboration Suite - Calendar - Version: 9.0.3 to 10.1.2
Information in this document applies to any platform.
Description

The American and Canadian governments recently announced changes to the 2007 daylight savings transition date (i.e. the day where Americans and Canadians switch from Daylight Savings to Standard Time). Instead of being the first Sunday in April, the new transition date will be the second Sunday in March (starting Sunday, March 11th, 2007). The daylight savings time will end the first Sunday in November rather than the last Sunday in October (starting Sunday, November 4th, 2007). Any application that relies on the use of time zone information, such as calendaring software, will be affected by the change to the daylight saving time transition.

Because the Oracle Calendar Server stores information in Universal Coordinated Time (e.g. without maintaining time zone information), some anomalies may still occur before and after applying changes to the time zone tables. It is important that users take measures to ensure their information is correct.

This problem is not exclusive to Oracle and could potentially affect other third-party calendar and scheduling products. For Windows users using the Oracle Connector for Outlook, there are changes that need to be made to the Microsoft Office products as well. For more information, please refer to the Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/timezone/dst2007.mspx

Likelihood of Occurrence

The problem will occur in any environment that includes users located in the United States or Canada that have not applied Patch 5862386, or have not updated their client-side or server-side time zone information.

This will affect all users having their time zone set for any time zones in North America, including Newfoundland Time, Atlantic Time, Eastern Time, Central Time, Mountain Time, Pacific Time, or Alaska Time.

Daylight Saving Time is not generally observed in the province of Saskatchewan, the states of Hawaii and Arizona (except for the Navajo Indian Reservation which does observe Daylight Savings), or the territories of Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

As of 2006, Indiana does observe Daylight Savings and is therefore affected by these changes.

Possible Symptoms

Any calendar meetings scheduled with Americans or Canadians for the end of March 2007 and the end of October 2007 might appear an hour off (e.g. one hour later) in their agendas. This is true for all future events that are scheduled between the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday of April, as well as between the last Sunday in October and the first Sunday in November. For the year 2007, this represents meetings scheduled for the weeks of March 11th, 2007 through April 1st, 2007 and for the weeks of October 28th, 2007 through November 4th, 2007. Meetings outside those dates will not be affected.

This will affect all users having their time zone set for any time zones in North America, including Newfoundland Time, Atlantic Time, Eastern Time, Central Time, Mountain Time, Pacific Time, or Alaska Time.

Workaround or Resolution

The Oracle Calendar Server Patch 5862386 corrects the problem. However, it is not possible to know which meetings were created before or after the time zone transition change. Therefore, we ask end-users and administrators to look closely at all meetings scheduled between March 11th, 2007 and April 1st, 2007 as well as October 28th, 2007 and November 4th, 2007 and ensure that they are scheduled for the right time. This is particularly true of meetings created by users outside North America but include attendees for users based in North America.

For Web Calendar Client users, the Patch 5862386 also needs to be applied on the Oracle Application System web client (OCAS) as well as the server.

To best avoid problems, we recommend the following practices:

Print or export the appointments that fall between March 11th and April 1st as well as October 28th and November 4th before modifying the operating system time zone. As an easy backup, the agenda can be exported to an iCalendar file or a Comma-Separated File (CSV) file. For Outlook users, it is also possible to export the agenda to a Personal Storage File (PST) file.

Do not create appointments for the affected weeks until after the time zone information has been updated on the Oracle Calendar Server and until after the local operating system time zone has been updated for all users.

Modify any pre-existing appointments that fall between March 11th, 2007 and April 1st, 2007 as well as between October 28th, 2007 and November 4th, 2007 by manually modifying each appointment after the time zone information has been updated on the Oracle Calendar Server and after the local operating system time zone has been updated for all users.

Oracle Connector for Outlook users need to make sure to apply the Microsoft DST 2007 timezone patch, otherwise recurring events will be displayed one hour off during the affected times. For more information on the Microsoft patch, please refer to the Microsoft Knowledge Base articles:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/timezone/dst2007.mspx

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928388/

Patches The Server Patch 5862386 will update the time zone information, but will not reset calendar data already input into the system. For any questions, please contact an Oracle Support Representative.