Free Oracle Driver gives GMT as if it were local time

Question

I am using v.9.2.0 of ojdbc14.jar.
The client machine (where the JDBC driver is used) is set to Eastern Standard Time (EST).
So that machine is 5 hours behind GMT.
The database machine is set to PST.
So that machine is 8 hours behind GMT.
Via JDBC I send the following query from the client machine:
select current_timestamp from dual
I then perform:
Timestamp ts = rs.getTimestamp(1);
At 4:41pm EST (local machine time where the JDBC driver code is running), the following 2 lines of code:
System.out.println("***" +ts);
System.out.println("***" +ts.toGMTString());
Gives the following 2 lines of output:
***2003-02-05 21:41:00.579
***6 Feb 2003 02:41:00 GMT
The first line of output shows 9:41 pm EST.
But that is not correct.
It seems that the JDBC driver is lying to me...
taking a GMT value and saying that it is EST (local time).
I'm thinking that is the only way that the 2nd line of output would be what it is.
The same problem also occurs when using i-Net's Oranxo driver for JDBC 3.0.
Am I missing something here, or doing something wrong ?
My JDBC code later feeds this incorrect value back to the driver to update a column in the database.
Has anyone seen this problem before and gotten past it ?
Currently, the only ways I see to get around it are:
1. be able to figure out the database offset (difference between system time on the database machine and GMT), from my JDBC code so that I can make the adjustment in my code.
OR
2. be able to tell the database "this is GMT" when I give it a timestamp value to insert or update.
Thanks for any help.
Matt McGinty

Answer 1

Hi Matt,
Yes, I have encountered problems similar to the ones you are describing. I found that the cause was due to the fact that the JRE classes have "rules" regarding daylight savings time -- and try to adjust dates and times according to these "rules".
What I did was to configure the default time zone so that it had no daylight savings times rules. This solved my problems.
Using JDK 1.4.1_01, I run the following code -- on starting up the JVM -- that "initializes" the default time zone:
[Please excuse the poor formatting of the below code -- I haven't figured out how to format code properly when posting to this forum, yet.]
TimeZone l_defaultTimeZone = TimeZone.getDefault();
int l_rawOffset = l_defaultTimeZone.getRawOffset();
String l_id = l_defaultTimeZone.getID();
SimpleTimeZone l_simpleTimeZone = new SimpleTimeZone(
l_rawOffset,
l_id,
0,
0,
0,
0,
0,
0,
0,
0);
TimeZone.setDefault(l_simpleTimeZone);
Hope this helps you.
Good Luck,
Avi.