Timestamp - something different in my DB?

Question

hi everybody;
i read several posts about it, but i still have no clue...
i have a simple problem using date fileds in java+DBs. there's a client and a server (OC4J + 8i DB). the client sends a point in time
as a number of seconds from 1970.
on the server i read it, multiply by 1000 and pass it to the DB, into DATE field.
a sample:
// reading seconds from String + conversion
Long seconds = new Long(sub);
Timestamp ts = new Timestamp((seconds.longValue() * 1000));
// set it in a query
DBquery.setTimestamp(j + 1, ts);
// ... adn later execute a query
everything is fine, but... but the date is NOT what was sent from the client. it's shifted. depending on the country
the system runs, it there's a constant difference between the what should be stored in the DB and what is really written there.
that leads to the conclusion that it's related to time-zones. the difference comes probably from the gap between GMT and local time.
anything i can do about it? for example: how to use TimeZone to format the timestamp properly (if possible).
thanx a lot for any help.

Answer 1

Timestamp ts1 = ...
long offset = new java.util.Date().getTimezoneOffset() * 60000;
Timestamp ts2 = new Timestamp(ts1.getTime() + offset);