The switch to Daylight Saving Time in SAP

Written by Mark Mergaerts in Technology

 

For most humans, the switch to Daylight Saving Time (27th of March at 02:00 in the morning) just means one hour less sleep. But for software applications, the consequences are less appealing. Software often contains functions that are time-dependent. Compared to the other switch, the one to winter time, this is the “easy” one. Nevertheless, there are a few points that you must keep in mind even when the clock goes forward.

Daylight Saving Time 2022

These two SAP notes are the most important in this situation: note 7417 (Conversion between standard time and daylight saving time) and note 3015480 (Daylight saving time: best practices).

Although the clock goes forward one hour and thus no “double time” occurs, you might have to take some actions to ensure the continuity of you SAP system. Our expert Mark gathered his expertise and is happy to share with you a hands-on checklist:

  1. Identify all background jobs due to run on Sunday, 27 March between 2 AM and 3 AM and ensure that the 1-hour forward time change does not adversely affect these jobs. If in doubt postpone the job until after 3 AM.
  2. Connect with the application owners/key users and find out whether there are applications that are dependent on exact timing or time difference information and determine how these applications should be handled during the night of the switch to DST.
  3. Synchronize clocks: ensure that clock times are synchronized to the second between the database- and application servers.
  4. Check the platform- and product specific warnings to see whether any of these apply to your SAP environment
  • SAP HANA: Possible terminations caused by time difference between application and database server (SAP note 1932132) an check HANA DB for DST switch (SAP note 2080216)
  • Software Update Manager (SUM): in SAP note 2557518 SAP recommends stopping the SUM at a time before the change to Daylight Saving Time and only resuming it after the change has occurred.
  • IBM iSeries: SAP note 391658.
  • NewGL delta extractor to BI (only relevant for SAP ERP systems on a Enhancement Package 6 or lower): various problems if extractors runs at the time of the DST change; see SAP notes 1454474 and 1581238.

Still hungry for more? Download our whitepaper which enriches the check list with additional examples, a list of all key SAP notes and an overview of the time difference with other time zones.


Daylight Saving Time starts 27 March 2022

For most humans, the switch to Daylight Saving Time (27th of March at 02:00 in the morning) just means one hour less sleep. But for software applications, the consequences are less appealing. Read the whitepaper and find out all about it.

Download the whitepaper
Daylight Saving Time starts 27 March 2022

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About the author

Mark Mergaerts

Mark Mergaerts has more than 25 years of experience in SAP Basis Consulting. He knows the ins and outs of databases and landscapes and is highly experienced in performance and tuning of ABAP systems and the adapting of customer code when migrating to a different database platform.

Read more articles by Mark Mergaerts

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