Setting the Year offset value before upgrading the operating system

If you are upgrading a system that observes a non-Gregorian calendar to IBM® i V6R1, or later, you need to set the Year offset value before the system is upgraded to the new release. This is the preferred method because your time zone can be set correctly with this year offset as soon as the upgrade is complete.

Before the upgrade, complete the following steps:

  1. Create a user-defined time zone object based on the time zone that your system currently uses.
    1. From IBM Navigator for i, expand Configuration and Service > Time Management.
    2. Right-click on Time Zones and click Open.
    3. Click New Based On.
    4. Complete the fields as necessary.
  2. Create the QWCYEAROFS data area in the QSYS library.

    The QWCYEAROFS data area should be a character data area with a minimum length of 14 characters.

    1. Sign on to your system using a 5250 emulator session.
    2. Type the following command and press F4 (Prompt): 
      CRTDTAARA
    3. Specify QWCYEAROFS for the name of the data area.
    4. Specify QSYS for the library of the data area.
    5. Specify *CHAR for the Type parameter and press Enter.
    6. Specify 14 for the Length parameter.
    7. For the Initial value field, use the following format, and press Enter:
      Byte 1: Sign for the current Year offset (either + or -)
      Byte 2-4: Year offset from Gregorian year (000 to 140)
      Byte 5-14: Time zone description name, left-aligned and padded on the right with blanks.

      You can use a special value of *SYSVAL to indicate that the current time zone object specified in the Time zone (QTIMZON) system value should be changed. If you use this special value, you must complete an extra step to set the QTIMZON system value with the time zone object that you create (in step 1) before the upgrade. If the time zone that you specify does not exist, the current QTIMZON value is used.

During the upgrade of the operating system, the system observes the following rules to set the QTIMZON system value.

Table 1. Setting the QTIMZON system value
If Then
The QWCTIMZON data area exists. The system uses this data area to set the QTIMZON system value.
The QWCYEAROFS data area exists.
  1. The time zone value specified in this data area overrides any time zone value that is determined by the QWCTIMZON data area.
  2. The system looks for the QWCYEAROFS data area when determining the default Year offset value. The Year offset value is set in the time zone object that is determined by the QWCYEAROFS data area.
  3. The QTIMZON system value is set with this time zone description.

For more information about the QWCTIMZON data area, see Setting the time zone before upgrading to IBM i V5R3, or later.

Sample contents of the data area

Here are some examples of the contents of the data area.

1...5....0....  
-057QP0400UTC2    	Example 1 (Thai Buddhist)  
+012QP0900JST  		Example 2 (Japan)  
-057*SYSVAL    		Example 3 (Thai Buddhist with *SYSVAL)