[Openroad-users] eClient & Timezones

Thu Apr 17 15:23:18 EST 2008

I have looked at using Windows API's to get the current local time, and
there are 2 API's which I am trying to use, 'GetSystemTime' &
'GetLocalTime'.  However when I try to use these in a similar way to some of
the file handling API's we use, I get the error below indicating that the
procedure is not defined.

                    Li_RtnStatus = callproc DeleteFileA('file.txt');

                    Li_RtnStatus = callproc GetSystemTime();

                                                          ^

%% Warning at line 1273

E_W402B9 Warning - Procedure getsystemtime is undefined.

So obviously the Time related API's need to be structured differently, but I
am at a loss as to what is required to use these.  (I have 'kernel32.dll' in
the 'II_LIBU3GL' path.)  The API's also require a parameter of type
'SYSTEMTIME", and this has me stuck as well.

If anyone can help me out, that would be great.

Darren

Regards

Darren Harvey

MyWorkplace Solutions Pty Limited

Level 5, 11 Queens Road

Melbourne Victoria 3004

Ph.       1300 733 731

Mob.     0400 398 188

Fax.      03 9710 1112

Making Service our Priority

www.MyWorkplace.com.au

If you receive this email by mistake, please notify us and do not make any
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From: openroad-users-bounces at peerlessit.com
[mailto:openroad-users-bounces at peerlessit.com] On Behalf Of Fabian Anderson
Sent: Friday, 11 April 2008 7:56 AM
To: International OpenROAD Users
Subject: Re: [Openroad-users] eClient & Timezones-CORRECTION KB415539not
KB415439

Hi Darren,

            Using the Win32 SDK to get the timezone from the control panel
is the way it would work normally (for any other distributed app).so I think
the same approach would be needed for eClient.  

            I find it odd though that the eClient doesn't already offer a
function that gets this information, but rather provides a means to pass the
environment from the server.

            I would proceed with the Win32 SDK idea, but only for
display/conversion purposes.  You should not need to store an additional
date/varchar though.

Cheers,

Fabian Anderson

Systems Analyst

Fintechnix Pty Ltd

  _____  

From: openroad-users-bounces at peerlessit.com
[mailto:openroad-users-bounces at peerlessit.com] On Behalf Of Darren Mason
Sent: Friday, 11 April 2008 9:39 AM
To: 'International OpenROAD Users'
Subject: Re: [Openroad-users] eClient & Timezones -CORRECTION KB415539not
KB415439

Thank you Durwin and Bill,

It seems the consensus is to store a copy of each date field into a text
field that represents the 'local' view of the time and then use this for
display purposes.

What concerns me is the effort required by us to address the issue in this
way. As we are developers of  Time & Attendance software, as you would
expect, the software is  a heavy user of date fields.   What compounds this
is the implication of rolling such a change out to 100+ clients.     Not
pretty in a commercial world.

Where our thoughts have evolved to is deploying the eClient so it runs the
same Timezone as the server, so Perth WA in effect, is on the Sydney NSW
Timezone.   This will ensure all data is viewed consistently - I submit
9:00am in Perth it will be displayed as 9:00am in Sydney, etc.    Are there
any gotchas with this, is this heresy, or a viable approach?

This leaves us with cases where we have used SELECT date('now').   My
understanding is this gets the current date and time from the server so
bypasses input from the client.   So if a user clicks on a button to say
they are starting or finishing work it will apply the server view of 'now',
which if I was in Perth and the server in Sydney would be out by 2 hours.

To address this I expect we need to get the current system time from the
local client and use it (where appropriate).   Our audit logs that record
when changes were made by users will need to use this alternate approach.

We have not used any Windows API calls to get the time on the client PC
previously but I expect it is simple enough.

If anyone can see any 'gotchas' with what we are doing we will gladly hear
them!

Thanks.

Regards

Darren Mason

cid:image001.jpg at 01C75FC8.883E9850

MyWorkplace Solutions Pty Limited

Level 5, 11 Queens Road

Melbourne Victoria 3004

Ph.   1300 733 731

Mob. 0419 337 170

Fax.  03 9710 1112

Making Service our Priority

www.MyWorkplace.com.au

If you receive this email by mistake, please notify us and do not make any
use of the email. We do not waive any privilege, confidentiality or
copyright associated with it.

From: openroad-users-bounces at peerlessit.com
[mailto:openroad-users-bounces at peerlessit.com] On Behalf Of Durwin Wright
Sent: Friday, 11 April 2008 1:25 AM
To: International OpenROAD Users
Subject: Re: [Openroad-users] eClient & Timezones - CORRECTION KB415539not
KB415439

Hello Darren,

It looks like you are dealing with an artifact of the Ingres implementation
of the INGRES DATE datatype.  Your description of how the INGRES DATE is
stored as GMT in the database is accurate.  When a local client retrieves an
INGRES DATE datatype, it flows across the wire in the GMT normalized form.
Internally in the local client it retrains it's GMT form.  When it is time
to convert the date into a DATE LITERAL is when the timezone offsets are
applied.

We tend to think of the INGRES DATE and the INGRES DATE LITERAL as being
equivalent.  In many cases they do get treated identically. 

Maybe you can try introducing an additional column in which you store the
the INGRES DATE LITERAL value evaluated on the local OpenROAD eClient by
using he VARCHAR(ingresdate) expression.  If you have an Ingres database (or
EA) connection this expression will evaluate to the same value since the
DBMS server will put the session that the client is using into the same
timezone name.  If you have an eClient that uses an OpenROAD Server
connection, the same is not true.

If the Sydney client stores the VARCHAR(ingresdate) value in the database
where the time is 11:00 AM, then when the Perth client retrieves this value
they will also see 11:00 AM.  This can be converted back into an INGRES DATE
value by using the DATE(ingres date liternal) expression.  One caution, is
that when you use this technique, you are effectively using an implicit
INGRES DATE WITHOUT TIMEZONE value.  Do not forget that the INGRES DATE
semantic always assume that the they will be normalized to GMT when they are
passed to the Ingres Server.  

When the eClient passes an INGRES DATE to the OpenROAD Server, it get's
passed also in a GMT normalized form.  The only difference, is that when the
OpenROAD Server passes the date into an Ingres database, it applies the
timezone offset that the OpenROAD Server is set to instead of the timezone
offset of the cleint.

Durwin Wright | Sr. Architect |  <mailto:Durwin.Wright at ingres.com>
Durwin.Wright at ingres.com | Ingres |
<http://maps.google.com/maps?q=500+arguello+street,+94063&ll=37.487297,-122.
233200&spn=0.004602,0.012771&t=k&hl=en> 500 Arguello Street | Suite 200 |
Redwood City | CA | 94063 | USA  +1 650-587-5523 | fax: +1 650-587-5550 

  _____  

From: openroad-users-bounces at peerlessit.com
[mailto:openroad-users-bounces at peerlessit.com] On Behalf Of Darren Mason
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2008 2:39 AM
To: 'International OpenROAD Users'
Subject: Re: [Openroad-users] eClient & Timezones - CORRECTION KB415539not
KB415439

(on behalf of Darren Harvey) 

Thanks for the advice Durwin,

That gives as some ideas on how to ensure we set the correct timezone at
each of our interstate sites. Our immediate thought is to check for an .ini
file on the client PC that will contain the local timezone value,  and if it
does not exists then prompt the user to select a timezone.  Once this has
been done the first time we should be ok from then on. We will start putting
ths in place.  The problem we are trying to resolve leads down the path of
viewing the data after it has been saved.  The following is based on the
Australian timezones.

Let's use Perth in WA where the is at 9:00am , Sydney in NSW where the time
is 11:00am, and GMT being 1:00 at the same time.

What we will be doing is enabling our Perth users to view the time as 9:00am
and save it accordingly - all is good.

Our Sydney users will view their times as 11:00am, and saving it accordingly
so all is good.

Our understanding is that the times are saved in the db as GMT times, so
9:00am in Perth and 11:00am in Sydney will both be saved as 1:00am GMT.
Now we start introducing an issue.

If a Sydney user then access the Perth times, the 9:00am will then be
displayed as 11:00am because it is applying the Sydney - NSW timezone.  The
reverse is true if a user in Perth needed to view times from a Sydney
employee.    11:00 am will be displayed as 9:00am.

We fear needing to introduce text fields to store the times that need to be
displayed on each screen, and I expect reporting will become an issue as it
will be reporting on a collective set of date fields without knowing the
source?

Any advice on how to address this would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Darren Mason

cid:image001.jpg at 01C75FC8.883E9850

MyWorkplace Solutions Pty Limited

Level 5, 11 Queens Road

Melbourne Victoria 3004

Ph.   1300 733 731

Mob. 0419 337 170

Fax.  03 9710 1112

Making Service our Priority

www.MyWorkplace.com.au

If you receive this email by mistake, please notify us and do not make any
use of the email. We do not waive any privilege, confidentiality or
copyright associated with it.

From: openroad-users-bounces at peerlessit.com
[mailto:openroad-users-bounces at peerlessit.com] On Behalf Of Durwin Wright
Sent: Thursday, 10 April 2008 5:59 PM
To: International OpenROAD Users
Subject: Re: [Openroad-users] eClient & Timezones - CORRECTION KB415539 not
KB415439

Are you using the eClient ENVIRONMENT= directive in your eclient in the
INSTALL4GL.TXT file that you use to package the eClient application?  An
excerpt fron the readme.txt for the eCleint is as follows,

    ENVIRONMENT

        This line can appear ZERO or more times.  The string to the right of

        the first "=" sign is treated as an environment variable
specification.

        These environment variables will be set in the eClient runtime
process

        before the OpenROAD runtime is initialized.

        The variable name is separated from the variable value by the second

        "=" sign, similar to the syntax for using "set" in a command window.

        Variable values can refer to other variables using the standard
%xxx%

        syntax (such as in the %II_ECLIENT_APPDIR% example shown above).

        The following "built-in" variables can be referenced by your own

        definitions:

            II_ECLIENT_APPDIR

                This will be set to the current eClient application's

                installation directory, which is also the current directory

                when the OpenROAD runtime executes this eClient application.

            II_ECLIENT_ROOT

                This will be set to the parent directory of the
application's

                installation directory.

            II_ECLIENT_LIBDIR

                This will be set to the eClient shared library installation

                directory.

            (Other predefined variables are described in a later section.)

        Variable definitions are processed in two passes.  First the
variables

        that do not reference any other variables (i.e., those that do not

        contain any "%" characters) are set.  In the second pass, the
variables

        that contain "%" references are expanded using the current
environment

        settings, and then set.

        The order in which variables are processed within each pass is not

        defined.  Therefore, you should not attempt to use more than one
level

        of nesting in your variable definitions.

Normally the II_TIMEZONE_NAME is retrieved from the SYMBOL.TBL for the
nstallation.  The eClient does not use a SYMBOL.TBL.  If there is an Ingres
installation on the machine where the eClient is deployed, then you could
use the ENVIRONMENT directive to set II_SYSTEM to an explicit value.  

An alternative to the SYMBOL.TBL is to explicitly use the SET command to
specific an II_TIMEZONE_NAME vlaue.  This environment variable cannot be set
after the eClient starts the underlying OpenROAD runtime.  The ENVIRONMENT
directive is processed prior to the eClient OpenROAD runtime initializing
and performs a SET on behalf of the eClient prior to the initialization of
the eClient OpenROAD runtime.

Take a look at Ingres KB415539, "How to run an eClient application using
different settings for II_W4GLAPPS_DIR to use different image versions".  It
specifically refers to II_W4GLAPPS_DIR but the technique cold easily be
generalized to having a previously Windows environment variable set that
contains the local value of II_TIMEZONE_NAME.

Durwin Wright | Sr. Architect |  <mailto:Durwin.Wright at ingres.com>
Durwin.Wright at ingres.com | Ingres |
<http://maps.google.com/maps?q=500+arguello+street,+94063&ll=37.487297,-122.
233200&spn=0.004602,0.012771&t=k&hl=en> 500 Arguello Street | Suite 200 |
Redwood City | CA | 94063 | USA  +1 650-587-5523 | fax: +1 650-587-5550 

  _____  

From: openroad-users-bounces at peerlessit.com
[mailto:openroad-users-bounces at peerlessit.com] On Behalf Of Darren Harvey
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2008 7:17 PM
To: 'International OpenROAD Users'
Subject: [Openroad-users] eClient & Timezones

I have a question re the handling of Timezones within an eClient
environment.  

Assume the time in NSW is 11:00 and Western Australia is 09:00.

We have built the Cab file through the OR Web-Publisher and specified an
environment parameter of 'II_TIMEZONE_NAME=AUSTRALIA-NSW'.  This works fine
in NSW, however when users in Western Australia run the eClient, they see
the 'current' time as 11:00 instead of the correct local time of 09:00.  (I
assume this is correct from an OR point of view? But unfortunately it isn't
what we require.)

Does this mean we need to build a separate Web application for Western
Australian users, that specifies a parameter of
'II_TIMEZONE_NAME=AUSTRALIA-WEST'? And that this would then show the
'current' time as 09:00.

I hope this makes sense.

Thanks

Darren

Regards

Darren Harvey

MyWorkplace Solutions Pty Limited

Level 5, 11 Queens Road

Melbourne Victoria 3004

Ph.       1300 733 731

Mob.     0400 398 188

Fax.      03 9710 1112

Making Service our Priority

www.MyWorkplace.com.au

If you receive this email by mistake, please notify us and do not make any
use of the email. We do not waive any privilege, confidentiality or
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