Before writing a Java Date to an SQL TIMESTAMP column, does JDBC translate the date from the JVM time zone to the database session time zone?

Question

Before writing a Java Date to an SQL TIMESTAMP column, does JDBC translate the date from the Java virtual machine time zone to that of the database session?

For example, suppose the Java virtual machine time zone is UTC and the database session time zone is UTC-5. If a Java program attempts to store 2000-01-01 00:00:00 by passing it to PreparedStatement#setTimestamp(int, Timestamp), according to the JDBC standard, will the database store TIMESTAMP '2000-01-01 00:00:00' or TIMESTAMP '1999-12-31 19:00:00'?

Answer 1

No, JDBC is just an API on how the client can access the database. For timestamp storage, this will have to be dependent by the organisation that writes their database drivers that conforms to the JDBC API standard.

Here's an implementation of MySQL's implementation of PreparedStatement. They seem to take Java's JVM timezone to MySQL Timezone (check the setTimestampInternal() method).

Answer 2

Now my requirement is that it should store the value in GMT/UTC irrespective of the timezone of the JVM. Is there a way to set the timezone on the fly and then to unset it once I'm done with JDBC?

Edit: Ok, I found a way around that issue. Did the following

TimeZone default = TimeZone.getDefault();
try
{
  TimeZone.setDefault(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));

  //Do stuff with JDBC
}
finally
{
  TimeZone.setDefault(default);
}