> If I create a file at 15:00 EDT on September 1, 1983, as shown by QUERY TIME 
> on that day, I expect CMS to show me 15:00, Sept 1, 1983 EDT forever.
Ah ha!  Yes, CMS will tell you that forever (via LISTFILE or your favorite CMS 
filesystem command) - same time, every time.

But if I recall correctly (more in doubt every day) CP is less friendly.  A 'CP 
Q sfid ALL' (and other SPOOL file-related) command return times one hour apart 
depending on whether the command is issued on one side of the timezone boundary 
or the other.  That 1-hour time change can lead to surprising application 
effects.  That's probably not worth any development effort, but it should be 
understood and noted (perhaps in some future edition "Usage Notes" update).

Mike Walter
Aon Service Corporation
The opinions expressed herein are mine alone, not necessarily those of my 
employer.

-----Original Message-----
From: CMSTSO Pipelines Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On 
Behalf Of Alan Altmark
Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2016 13:38
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: About DELAY after SET TIMEZONE

On Friday, 04/08/2016 at 03:30 GMT, Hobart Spitz <[email protected]>
wrote:
> An alternative/additional solution, possibly too much trouble, would 
> be
to
> add a timezone to the time specification:  E.g.  10:30-EST, 18:15-CDT, 
> etc.  Why too much trouble?  No all countries change clocks on the 
> same
day.

RFC 2822 defines canonical expressions for local time, so there's no real need 
to invent new ones, but it's important to stress that solving these temporal 
anomalies requires programmers to acknowledge that
- Leap seconds are important
- All persistent time values should be stored in TOD clock format

I've got people telling me that leap seconds aren't important.  And I respond 
that no, they're not important if you don't care what time it is. 
[Insert pop music references here.]  To me they are as important as the 
difference between EDT and PDT.  If you depend only on the IBM-defined TOD 
clock epoch, you're off by nearly 30 seconds.  How accurate does the local time 
representation need to be?  I say within 1 second of UTC, which is what you 
will be if you're using STP and you incur a leap second.  Could we do better?  
Yes, but the implementation costs start to rise.

If I create a file at 15:00 EDT on September 1, 1983, as shown by QUERY TIME on 
that day, I expect CMS to show me 15:00, Sept 1, 1983 EDT forever. 
  I don't care what airport I'm in today or how many intergalactic leap wedgies 
there have been.  TOD clock format allows me to maintain precision time values 
and order, even when I don't need to display microseconds for mere humans.

Alan Altmark

Senior Managing z/VM and Linux Consultant Lab Services System z Delivery 
Practice IBM Systems & Technology Group ibm.com/systems/services/labservices
office: 607.429.3323
mobile; 607.321.7556
[email protected]
IBM Endicott

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