[LINK] Banks online and the end of daylight time

[Kim Holburn]

I can't tell you about windows servers (which I think have an internal  
clock which uses local time ... shudder) but I have in the past had  
issues with databases.  *nix servers nearly always use GMT internally,  
so time zone changes forward or back only are referenced when the  
times are converted for viewing.  Databases though can have timestamps  
that could be local time.  Perhaps this is a matter of how they were  
programmed.  Databases generally don't like finding entries that have  
future time stamps, tends to upset them.  Turning everything off for  
the hour might be easier.  Of course turning them off for an hour  
probably means backing up, bringing everything down gently in the  
right order, then bringing everything back up again in the right  
order, could take quite a bit longer than an hour.


On 2010/Apr/01, at 9:09 PM, Rick Welykochy wrote:

> Gentle Linkers,
>
> A thread has arisen on the SLUG list regarding the fact that both the
> CBA and Westpac banks announce on the their online banking sites that
> they will be offline from about 2:00 AM to 5:00 AM Sunday during
> the end of daylight savings time. You know, that hour that jumps  
> backwards.
>
> The suggested reasons for this include normal system maintenance  
> (coincidence?),
> their Windows-based web servers not handling the changeover  
> properly, or worse
> still, the behaviour of their (archaic?) back-end systems is unknown  
> when 3:00 AM
> marches back to 2:00 AM.
>
> Does anyone with banking experience actually know how well modern
> banking functions during the daylight savings dropoff?
>
>  * do ATMs continue to function? perhaps in an offline mode?
>  * how about bank-to-bank transactions?
>  * and the myriad of international-to-domestic connections and  
> transactions?
>
> Enquiring idle Easter minds want to know!
>
>
> cheers
> rickw
>
>
> -- 
> _________________________________
> Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services
>
> Hofstadter's Law. "It always takes longer than you expect, even when
> you take into account Hofstadter's law."
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-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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