Time Zone support within MII PCo Queries

[Former Member]

MII connects to many source systems via PCo in order to retreive data. Not all these servers lie in the same time zone as MII. Most of the customer installations follow a distributed  architecture.

The following four cases arise:

1. (User)MII -> PCo -> Source system – All in same timezone (no issues should arise)
2. (User)MII(IST) ->  (PCo + Source system)(UTC)  -- PCo queries data in UTC and returns to MII.  If this data is being stored, it is in the time zone of MII server. If it is being displayed (using applets) it is either in end user time zone or time zone of MII server depending on display template setting. Issue arises if this data is used further and the timestamp data is required in Source system time zone(in this case UTC).
3. (User)MII(IST) - > PCo(UTC) - > Source system (UTC -5:00). This is a complicated case. PCo queries a source system and returns the data to MII in UTC. MII however, stores/displays all data in IST which is offset from source system by around 10 hours.
4. User/HTTP Request(UTC +1) -> MII(IST) - > PCo(UTC) - > Source system (UTC -5:00) -- This is the most complicated case. PCo queries a source system and returns the data to MII in UTC. MII however, stores/displays all data in IST which is offset from source system by around 10 hours and the user is further offset from there.

     Source System Time Zone support at query level

      When a PCo query is created, MII provides an option to capture as shown in the below image:

1) “Times in User Time Zone” flag specifies that the user wants his time information (Start Date, End Date, timestamps returned) to be interpreted in user’s local time zone. Suppose the user is in IST and specifies

1. Start date as 4^th June 2014, 9:00 a.m
2. End Date 5^th June 2014, 10:00 a.m

MII will interpret the query as: Return data from source system between 4^th June’2013 9:00 am IST to 5^th June’2013, 10:00 a.m IST.The user needs to specify his time zone in UME engine of Netweaver application server or else this setting is ignored.

2) “Times in Source System Time Zone” flag specifies that the wants his time information to be interpreted in source system time zone to which PCo connects. Suppose the user is in IST while the Source System to which PCo connects  is in UTC and the user specifies

1. Start date as 4^th June 2014, 9:00 a.m
2. End Date 5^th June 2014, 10:00 a.m

MII will interpret the query as: ‘Return data from source system between 4^th June’2013 9:00 am UTC to 5^th June’2013, 10:00 a.m UTC’. If the user wants to use this setting he also has to specify from the Source System drop down what the time zone for the source system is. MII will be converting Start Date and End Date data to UTC before sending it across to PCO. This is being done as internally PCo always uses UTC as the time zone for timestamp data.

Source System Time Zone support at display level

Till now, the user had only the following two options to for display of date/time data

     1) Date can be formatted according to User’s locale

     2) Date can be formatted according to Java application server time zone

A new option has been added to MII display templates which allows the user to select if he want to display data in time zone of Source system to which PCo connects. There is a new flag added to display templates. There is an drop-down which will help the user to specify which time zone the source system is in.

If a user wants to display his timestamp results in the source system time zone, he can choose this option. He has to specifically state which timezone his source system is in.

This is strictly a display level setting. This does not impact how data is returned from the query.

All these features are available to users in MII 14.0 SP06 and MII 15.0 SP03.