Date converting to less one day while transferring from client to server

Question

Hi,
I have very typical problem. My application is in java, we are using oralce 9ias. The problem when the server is running in german locale and client is running in english. We the date value is passed from client to server it is converting to one day less.
i.e.
If i want to search with records jan 02,2005,
on server side if we print the value it is getting as jan 01,2005.
Can anybody help me in solving the above problem.
Its bit very urgent.
Thanks in advance
regards
Kalyan

Answer 1

well, i have had nightmares with this problem. here are the reason and soln:
reason:
in ur DB, u r using a field "Date" which does not include time information. Hence, any date will be taken at 00:00:00. If such a date is opened in some other timezone, which is ahead of the server timezone, the date differs by one. This is becoz java always considers the millisecond info encapsulated in the date, calendar.
soln:
Step 1:
u must be able to get the "timeZoneOffset" from a calendar object. This timeZoneOffset will give the number of minutes/seconds/hours... by which the system is offset from GMT.
Thus if u create a calendar in India, the timeZoneOffset will be 330. If you create the calendar in UK, it will be 0.
To achieve this, we have made an object-UTCDate. This class encapsulates a Calendar. It has a function called "getTimeZoneOffset".
Step 2:
Once u get the timeZoneOffset, here is what u need to do in ur code. (assume that the timeZoneOffset is in minutes. the variable names will be self-explanatory)
at the client side code:
long timeInMillis = calendar.getTime().getTime() + (timeZoneOffsetOfTheCalendarReceivedFromServer * 60 * 1000 ) - (timeZoneOffsetOfClient * 60 * 60 )
use timeInMillis to make a new Date Object and use this date object.
at the server side code:
long timeInMillis = calendar.getTime().getTime() + (timeZoneOffsetOfTheCalendarReceivedFromClient * 60 * 1000 ) - (timeZoneOffsetOfServer * 60 * 60 )
hope this helps.
regards