TIMEZONE attribute

Specifies the time zone offset from UTC, in minutes, to use for the current session.

Data type: INTEGER

Access: Readable/Writeable

The AVM uses the TIMEZONE value to calculate the results of:

the functions DATETIME-TZ, MTIME, NOW, TIME, TIMEZONE, and TODAY
direct assignment operations between DATE, DATETIME, and DATETIME-TZ data types
the special TODAY and NOW initial values for database and temp-table fields with DATE, DATETIME, and DATETIME-TZ data types.

For example, the following code shows how TIMEZONE Is used in a direct assignment of a DATE value to a DATETIME-TZ value:

DEFINE VARIABLE dDate AS DATE NO-UNDO.
DEFINE VARIABLE tzDate AS DATETIME-TZ NO-UNDO.

dDate = 1/25.
tzDate = dDate.
DISPLAY tzDate.

Because the DATETIME-TZ data type contains more information than a DATE data type, the time value of tzDate defaults to midnight. If SESSION:TIMEZONE is not set, the timezone defaults to the session's timezone, and the code displays:

01/25/2016 00:00:00.000-5:00

However, if SESSION:TIMEZONE is set to 120, the timezone is offset from UTC by two hours, and the code displays:

01/25/2016 07:00:00.000+2:00

For more information on assignments with time data types, see the ASSIGN statement.

Notes

For releases 11.6.0 and earlier, TIMEZONE only affected the MTIME, NOW, TIME, TIMEZONE, and TODAY functions. TIMEZONE was not applied to the DATETIME-TZ function and direct assignments. You can revert to the behavior of earlier releases by specifying the -useSessionTZ 0 parameter. See OpenEdge Deployment: Startup Command and Parameter for more information on -useSessionTZ.