Time zones

Besides being sensitive to local time zone considerations, Sterling™ Order Management System Software is configured to recognize worldwide time zones.

For example, if an order is placed in Germany for fulfillment in the United States, but, the order details are not filled on time, the software considers differences in the two time zones in order to raise an exception at the appropriate hour in the United States.

Following are the different ways in which the Application Platform handles time zones:

Note: When you define a locale with a time zone (for example, en_US_EST) and when the user is logged in for that locale, the system uses the files ending in <language>_<country> code only. For instance, if the application had time zones fr_CA_EST and fr_CA_GMT set up for a locale, the system uses the same files (for example, ycpapibundle_fr_CA.properties, en_US_ycplocalizedstrings_fr_CA.properties, earth_fr_CA.css) irrespective of the time zone of the logged in user.
  • When date and time values are stored, it is converted to the locale of the database. For example, assume that a database is in New York, and a customer service representative is in London. The customer service representative enters the details of an order. When the order's date and time are stored in the database that resides in New York, the values are converted to Eastern Standard Time.
  • When date and time fields are displayed in the user interface, Sterling Order Management System Software performs time zone calculations based on the current locale of the user, and displays the time accordingly. For example, when a customer service representative in London views an order that resides in a database in New York, the date and time are converted from Eastern Standard Time to Greenwich Mean Time.

    When a date field does not contain a time component, the time is assumed to be 12 a.m. Such fields are not adjusted for time zones when viewed from various locales with different time zones.

  • The Sterling Order Management System Software APIs display the date and time the way they are stored in the database. For time-sensitive fields, the time zone difference from the Universal Time Coordinate (UTC) is appended to the date and time in the output.