Setting the database time zone

You can set the time zone of your Amazon RDS Oracle database in the following ways:

• The Timezone option

  The Timezone option changes the time zone at the host level and affects all date columns and values such as SYSDATE. For more information, see Oracle time zone.

• The Amazon RDS procedure rdsadmin.rdsadmin_util.alter_db_time_zone

  The alter_db_time_zone procedure changes the time zone for only certain data types, and doesn't change SYSDATE. There are additional restrictions on setting the time zone listed in the Oracle documentation.

Note

You can also set the default time zone for Oracle Scheduler. For more information, see Setting the time zone for Oracle Scheduler jobs.

The alter_db_time_zone procedure has the following parameters.

Parameter name	Data type	Default	Required	Description
p_new_tz	varchar2	—	Yes	The new time zone as a named region or an absolute offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Valid offsets range from -12:00 to +14:00.

The following example changes the time zone to UTC plus three hours.

EXEC rdsadmin.rdsadmin_util.alter_db_time_zone(p_new_tz => '+3:00');

The following example changes the time zone to the Africa/Algiers time zone.

EXEC rdsadmin.rdsadmin_util.alter_db_time_zone(p_new_tz => 'Africa/Algiers');

After you alter the time zone by using the alter_db_time_zone procedure, reboot your DB instance for the change to take effect. For more information, see Rebooting a DB instance. For information about upgrading time zones, see Time zone considerations.