Re: ** impact of time clock changes on Running Oracle DB

  • From: Mladen Gogala <mgogala@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: ajoshi977@xxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 16:09:09 -0500

A Joshi wrote:

>Hi,
>  I would like to know the impact of changing the time on my UNIX machine. how 
> would it impact a ORACLE database running on the server. I think Oracle takes 
> its sysdate from the UNIX. Thanks for your help. 
>  
>
You should have received a big sand watch with your Oracle CD set. Ask 
Oracle to send you the Redmond sand watch.
Oracle customer support will love you for that. If you don't have the 
sand watch, then the only place that Oracle can get
information about time is Unix. Changing time will, of course, create 
things that are not well ordered with respect to time,
but nothing will be badly damaged because Oracle, as opposed to DB2, 
does not use seconds and/or microseconds for
primary keys. If you are using DATE/TIMESTAMP column as a primary/unique 
key, you may have some trouble with
your applications. That is precisely the reason why Einstein decided 
that time travel was forbidden by the laws of physics.
Another thing that may be suffering is auditing. Once you travel into 
the past, you cannot be sure about the timing in any of
auditing records. Normally time is being changed on weekends when there 
isn't much of any activity, so the time change has
virtually no impact. If you are worried about the DST,  the clock will 
be moving in harmless  direction this time. It is the change
in October that can cause problems. Time is changed on twice every year 
and nothing bad has ever happened to my
databases.

-- 
Mladen Gogala
Oracle DBA
Ext. 121


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