Daylight Saving Time (DST) and BEPS
Lately, we have been getting a lot of questions about how BEPS will be affected by the upcoming rule changes to Daylight Saving Time.
The first thing you should realize is that BEPS is a data mover. It does not modify date or time data within your jobs. In fact, BEPS doesn’t know date and time data from any other data. So, as to whether these changes will effect your data, the answer is NO. If the date and time data within your job is correct, then your output will be correct. If the job is not correct, then the output won’t be correct. Thus, the DST changes will not affect this portion of BEPS and you should not worry about BEPS corrupting your jobs.
That being said, there are areas external to your job data where BEPS does use and display date and time information. It’s used as job metadata in the form of header fields, it’s displayed in the spool window, it’s used for scheduling and routing, it’s used to trigger retain purges, it’s used in the banner and trailer pages created by BEPS, and so on. In these instances where date and time data are used by BEPS, the software gets its information from the local system’s clock as reported by the operating system or from the host or mainframe. So, if the date and time are correct on the PC and the host, then there will be no problem.
With this in mind, we strongly recommend that you update your PC’s operating system so that the new DST rules are applied automatically. That means you should go to the Microsoft Update website at http://update.microsoft.com and download the necessary updates. Please note that the DST updates were not listed as critical updates, but were optional the last time I checked. So please be sure to check all available updates for your system. In addition to the operating system, you should also update your Java client software if you are using the BEPS Web Interface. To download the latest version, go to the Java website at http://www.java.com. Finally, if your system interacts with a mainframe, you should contact your host provider to ensure that the host is prepared for the DST changes.
Again, there a no changes required to BEPS in order to accommodate the new DST rules.
One final word about the new DST rules. All of the hype surrounding this boils down to setting the clock. The reason for the patches to the operating system, Java, etc. is simply to change the clock automatically at the right time. Even if you don’t get these patches, you can still set the clock to the proper date/time manually. The point is, this is not a situation like Y2K where the clock was actually broken.
I hope this helps.
Have A Great Day!
Alan McKinney, Senior Support Analyst, Barr Systems, LLC
http://www.barrcentral.com/ 352-491-3100
The first thing you should realize is that BEPS is a data mover. It does not modify date or time data within your jobs. In fact, BEPS doesn’t know date and time data from any other data. So, as to whether these changes will effect your data, the answer is NO. If the date and time data within your job is correct, then your output will be correct. If the job is not correct, then the output won’t be correct. Thus, the DST changes will not affect this portion of BEPS and you should not worry about BEPS corrupting your jobs.
That being said, there are areas external to your job data where BEPS does use and display date and time information. It’s used as job metadata in the form of header fields, it’s displayed in the spool window, it’s used for scheduling and routing, it’s used to trigger retain purges, it’s used in the banner and trailer pages created by BEPS, and so on. In these instances where date and time data are used by BEPS, the software gets its information from the local system’s clock as reported by the operating system or from the host or mainframe. So, if the date and time are correct on the PC and the host, then there will be no problem.
With this in mind, we strongly recommend that you update your PC’s operating system so that the new DST rules are applied automatically. That means you should go to the Microsoft Update website at http://update.microsoft.com and download the necessary updates. Please note that the DST updates were not listed as critical updates, but were optional the last time I checked. So please be sure to check all available updates for your system. In addition to the operating system, you should also update your Java client software if you are using the BEPS Web Interface. To download the latest version, go to the Java website at http://www.java.com. Finally, if your system interacts with a mainframe, you should contact your host provider to ensure that the host is prepared for the DST changes.
Again, there a no changes required to BEPS in order to accommodate the new DST rules.
One final word about the new DST rules. All of the hype surrounding this boils down to setting the clock. The reason for the patches to the operating system, Java, etc. is simply to change the clock automatically at the right time. Even if you don’t get these patches, you can still set the clock to the proper date/time manually. The point is, this is not a situation like Y2K where the clock was actually broken.
I hope this helps.
Have A Great Day!
Alan McKinney, Senior Support Analyst, Barr Systems, LLC
http://www.barrcentral.com/ 352-491-3100
Labels: beps
posted by Ron Van Aken at 6:11 PM
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