DB2, like most IBM products these days (and a vast majority of other vendors) ONLY care about the UTC (which has replaced, and is more precise than GMT) time, especially for log records. For example, the bind timestamp (consistency token) is generated via the STCK machine instruction, which returns the UTC time. One GREAT reason for using UTC time with local time offsets is that you don't need to bring your system down (unless you have local applications that log with local time) for one hour in the fall. Since the UTC is always increasing, there is no possibility of getting duplicate timestamps if the timestamps are using UTC time. HOWEVER: (and this may be a BIG issue) If you are geographically located West of the meridian, when you convert over to UTC time, you will need to be down for the number of hours west you are, in order to prevent duplicate timestamps from occuring. Wayne Driscoll Product Developer Western Metal Supply NOTE: All opinions are strictly my own.
-----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Charles Mills Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 7:31 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Best practice for TOD clock I'm engaged in an internal dispute about best practice for the TOD clock: should it be set to universal time (or whatever GMT is now called) with the appropriate local offset, or alternatively, to local time (with an offset of zero)? The argument for local time I guess is that it's more simple and convenient -- why complicate life? You don't set your clocks at home to GMT and remember what the offset is to local time. I'm on the other side of the argument. My gut feeling is that GMT is what the platform designers had in mind -- but as I have said before in this forum, I have no credentials as an ops guy, and I am getting nowhere with this argument. Can anyone venture a concise statement on why it is best practice to do it one way or the other? One specific question: which time goes into a DB2 program bind timestamp? If one is compiling on one machine and executing on another, and the machines are in two different local time zones, would setting the hardware clock on both machines to GMT make the error messages go away? Thanks, Charles Mills ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
