The basic prerequisite for the time zone support is the existence of date and time data in one database field / object type attribute.

Of the three database management systems supported, Oracle and MS SQL Server do not need schema changes because their DATE (Oracle) or DATETIME (MS SQL Server) fields can also handle time information and thus can be used for the Timestamp attribute type. This enables the steps to implement time zone support to be performed without a need for further changes.

For DB2, the use of the Timestamp attribute requires introduction of a new TIMESTAMP database column. This specific issue is beyond the scope of this documentation and should be covered in the database documentation.

Note: On MS SQL Server, the DATETIME information is stored with time precision of 3.33 ms, so the exact Valuemation timestamp is rounded to that precision when saved in the database. This can cause problems if Valuemation relies on higher precision, for instance when the exact value is used in update statements. In this case the latest datchg information registered by Valuemation will not match corresponding datchg record in the database which might be interpreted as an edit of the record by another user.