The U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed by the U.S. Congress July, 2005, extended Daylight Saving Time (DST) in the U.S. by approximately four weeks. As a result, beginning in 2007, DST will start three weeks earlier, on March 11, 2007 (previously first Sunday in April), and end one week later on November 4, 2007 (previously last Sunday of October). This change will result in a new DST period that is four weeks longer than previously observed.

Unless certain updates are applied to your computer, the time zone settings for your computer's system clock may be incorrect (off by one hour) during this four week period. This will depend on where you live and which time zone you have selected. In addition, certain applications running on your Windows based computer may not display the correct time.

To prevent this problem from occurring, please ensure that all applicable stations are updated with the following:

• OS Patch offered by Microsoft and support vendors. For information on this update and your specific environment, go to http://support.microsoft.com/gp/dst_topissues#a6
• Daylight Savings Time maintenance pack release (see below)

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Retail Pro Daylight Savings Time Maintenance Pack

The Daylight Savings Time maintenance pack release being issued by Retail Pro is a supplement to the OS patch being offered by Microsoft and other supporting vendors. Installing this maintenance pack will ensure that Oracle and Java Virtual Machine use the correct time zone information.

Important! The Daylight Savings Time maintenance pack for Retail Pro 9 will not address all possible issues with the 2007 Daylight Savings Time changes. Most areas of the Retail Pro application pull information for time zones from the operating system, not from Oracle. All computers in the United States must be upgraded before March 11, 2007.  You will also need to upgrade any servers that host an Oracle database that contains data that originates in an affected time zone or publishes data to an affected time zone. In addition, you should apply the updates to any systems that are used for technical support.

If users fail to update their operating system by the March 11^th, any documents created within Retail Pro will likely display and store time zone information incorrectly. Application of the Daylight Savings Time maintenance pack afterwards will not correct these former documents

Oracle uses data files containing time zone information to determine the correct time zone offset to apply to certain date data stored in the database.  Specifically, dates stored in columns defined as TIMESTAMP WITH TIMEZONE and TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIMEZONES are affected. An example of this type of field found on Retail Pro documents is MODIFIED_DATE.  No other date data types are affected.

Retail Pro 9 currently uses Oracle Database 9.2.  There are two ways to store time zone information in the database – by time zone offset and by time zone name.  Retail Pro uses time zone offsets.  The time zone offset is the number of hours that the time zone differs from the UTC time.  It is important to use the current Oracle time zone files so that the time stamps recorded in the database are correct.  For example, if your database contains data that originated in the United States and you had outdated time zone files in your Oracle home then your time stamps could be incorrect by one hour.  An incorrect time stamp can cause confusion in reports based on Retail Pro document modified dates and other processes where correct timestamps are crucial.

Running the Daylight Savings Time Maintenance Pack

Run the Daylight Savings Time maintenance pack on any machine where Retail Pro (client or server) is installed.  The MP will take additional time to complete the data conversion process required to upgrade your database.  Making a backup of your database is strongly recommended before applying this MP.

Locating the Daylight Savings Time Maintenance Pack

The Daylight Savings Time Maintenance Pack is located on the Partners.RetailPro.com website under Downloads, or you can use the link provided below.

http://partners.retailpro.com/DSTUpdate.php

Steps to upgrade a client installation:

1. Run the Daylight Savings Time maintenance pack.

The MP copies the new time zone data files into your \oracle\ods901\oracore\zoneinfo folder.

2. Client upgrade is complete.

Steps to upgrade a database installation:

1. Make a backup of your database.
2. Run the Daylight Savings Time maintenance pack.

The MP copies the new time zone data files into your \oracle\ods901\oracore\zoneinfo folder and database services are bounced.

3. Database upgrade is finished.

TRADEMARKS
Island Pacific®, Retail Pro® and Synaro® are registered trademarks of Island Pacific, Inc., and may not be used without expressed, written permission.

Thank you for using the OSD forum!

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Donna Knight

System Consultant/Knowledge Base Manager

What will you learn about Retail Pro today?
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