DSTv28 Timezone Patches Available for E-Business Suite 12.1 and 12.2

If your E-Business Suite Release environment is configured to support Daylight Saving Time (DST) or international time zones, it's important to keep your timezone definition files up-to-date. They were last changed in October 2016 and released as DSTv27. 

DSTv28 is now available and certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 and 12.2. This update includes the timezone information from the IANA tzdata 2016g. It is cumulative: it includes all previous Oracle DST updates.

Is Your Apps Environment Affected?

When a country or region changes DST rules or their time zone definitions, your Oracle E-Business Suite environment will require patching if:

• Your Oracle E-Business Suite environment is located in the affected country or region OR
• Your Oracle E-Business Suite environment is located outside the affected country or region but you conduct business or have customers or suppliers in the affected country or region

The latest DSTv28 timezone definition file is cumulative and includes all DST changes released in earlier time zone definition files. DSTv27 includes changes to the following timezones since the DSTv24 release:

• Asia/Rangoon
• Asia/Istanbul
• Europe/Istanbul
• Turkey

What Patches Are Required?

In case you haven't been following our previous time zone or Daylight Saving Time (DST)-related articles, international timezone definitions for E-Business Suite environments are captured in a series of patches for the database and application tier servers in your environment. The actual scope and number of patches that need to be applied depend on whether you've applied previous DST or timezone-related patches. Some sysadmins have remarked to me that it generally takes more time to read the various timezone documents than it takes to apply these patches, but your mileage may vary.
Proactive backports of DST upgrade patches to all Oracle E-Business Suite tiers and platforms are not created and supplied by default. If you need this DST release and an appropriate patch is not currently available, raise a service request through support providing a business case with your version requirements.
The following Note identifies the various components in your E-Business Suite environment that may need DST patches:

• Complying with Daylight Saving Time (DST) and Time Zone Rule Changes in E-Business Suite 12 (Note 563019.1)

What is the business impact of not applying these patches?
Timezone patches update the database and other libraries that manage time. They ensure that those libraries contain the correct dates and times for the changeover between Daylight Savings Time and non-Daylight Savings Time.

Time is used to record events, particularly financial transactions.  Time is also used to synchronize transactions between different systems.  Some organizations’ business transactions are more-sensitive to timezone changes than others. 

If you do not apply a timezone patch, and do business with a region that has changed their timezone definitions, and record a transaction that occurs at the boundary between the “old” and the “new” time, then the transaction may be recorded incorrectly. That transaction's timestamp may be off by an hour. 

For example:

• An order is placed for a customer in a country which changed their DST dates in DST v27
• The old Daylight Savings Time expiration date was Nov. 2
• The new Daylight Savings Time expiration date is now October 31
• An order is set to ship at 12am on November 1st
• Under the old Daylight Savings Time rules, the revenue would be recorded for November
• Under the new Daylight Savings Time rules, the revenue would be recorded for October

Related Article

• DSTv27 Timezone Patches Available for E-Business Suite 12.1
• DSTv27 Timezone Patches Available for E-Business Suite 12.2

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