ALERT - Potentially Serious Problem with DST Patches for PST8PDT Timezone

Oracle-l list,
 
I just got confirmation from Oracle Support of a new problem I found
with the timezone patches.  I've been told a note/alert will be released
on Metalink within a few days once they've worked out the details, but
here is what I think I know so far:
 
DISCLAIMER: This is for informational purposes only - act on it at your
own risk.  I recommend waiting for official instructions from Oracle
before taking any action.
 
In the v3 and v4 timezone files that have been released recently, the
PST8PDT timezone has been added as a "real" timezone as opposed to just
an alias for another timezone as it was in v2.  This means that Oracle
stores the internal timezone ID differently.  The timezdif.csv files
that were shipped with the updated utltzuv2.sql scripts erroneously
omitted PST8PDT and the other v2 aliased timezones in the list of
affected timezones to check for.  The net result is that if you have any
TSTZ data with the PST8PDT timezone or any of the other newly added v3
timezones*, then you need to back it up (copy to varchar2 column) before
installing the new timezone files and then restore afterwards and this
is regardless of the timeframe.
 
I haven't done any testing yet to find out exactly what happens with
these timezones if you don't backup/restore them before & after the
patch, but I plan to do that soon and will post my findings.  I will
also post an update with the Metalink note number as soon as they tell
me about it.
 
Regards,
Brandon
 
*New timezones added in v3:
EST
MST
HST
EST5EDT
CST6CDT
MST7MDT
PST8PDT
America/Indiana/Vincennes
America/Indiana/Petersburg
 

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