STARDATE?!??! Nooooooooooooooooooooo! Sorry...flashback to Interbase (nee "Starbase") version 3 and a lost = day's work from our ERP system due to a corrupted DB caused by an = inadvertent client disconnect when a user's PC crashed. <shudder> Rich -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Behalf Of Mladen Gogala Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2005 2:37 PM To: Christian.Antognini@xxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: Ramesh FL; oracle-l I don't see what is the problem? It works in 9.2.0.5:: Connected to: Oracle9i Enterprise Edition Release 9.2.0.5.0 - Production With the Partitioning, OLAP and Oracle Data Mining options JServer Release 9.2.0.5.0 - Production SQL> alter database set time_zone=3D'EST'; Database altered. SQL> Are you sure that you're not trying to set TIMEZONE to STARDATE? --=20 Mladen Gogala Oracle DBA Ext. 121 -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l