Peter Hunkeler wrote:

>When time comes to switch back from daylight saving time to standard time, 
>we're stopping our DBMS and middleware softwar for one hour. Reason being that 
>we cannot get commitment from the application side that each and every 
>application is either using UTC or that it can cope with duplicate time stamps.

Good to stop everything and let them 'rest'. Just do it.

>Someone has put the idea in our managment's head that there is a software 
>soltution which avoids the one hour pause. The software would "slows down" the 
>(local time) clock so that one software hour will take two real hours to pass 
>by.

Utter BS! Who told your management that BS? Did you get any documentation or 
proof of that claim?

Huh, hardware clocks will still be running at the same speed by themselves no 
way how you adjust your clocks.


>We'd like to be able to argue with management about this idea.

Use Radoslaw's question. Add my other question: Are your business ready to 
accept they will be the only one recording events at times not acknowledged in 
the rest of your country?

What would you and your auditors say, user X is revoked at 02:31 when no such 
time is actually there? Say your clocks run until 02:00 and drop dead until 
03:00 or so? And your system is recording those 'dead' times in SMF records...

Your transaction audit records would look 'funny'...

PS: I wish we have two timezones [1] and Daylight Saving [2], but ... ;-)

Groete / Greetings
Elardus Engelbrecht

[1] - Really, you can get somewhat confused by the sun's position if you travel 
from/to Cape Town to Durban by air.
[2] - It has been suggested to our government years ago, but no Daylight Saving.

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