Selecting a time zone in Niagara

Since the first Niagara release, platform configuration of a Niagara host includes the setting of date and time, which includes specifying its local time zone.

NOTE: For any Niagara 4 Windows host, you must use Windows tools to specify a time zone and/or change date and time. Such tasks, as well as TCP/IP configuration on a Windows host, are read-only.

Typically, you specify time zone in a JACE controller during its inital commissioning in a platform connection, when running the Commissioning Wizard. Or, you can do this at any time using the Platform Administration view (function “Change Date/Time”).

Figure 145. Selecting time zone from Change Date/Time selection in Platform Administration View

After a station is installed and running, you can also specify a JACE’s time zone using one of the station’s PlatformService views (“Platform Service Container Plugin” or “System Date and Time Editor”).

In any case, time zones appear on a selection list with a format such as: Zone ID (± hours UTC offset DST,± hours UTC offset UST).

For example:

America/Chicago (-6,-5)
Europe/Berlin (+1,+2)
Asia/Tokyo (+9)

Note there is no DST observance in Japan, so the selection with zone ID “Asia/Tokyo” shows only the UTC offset of +9 hours. This selection list of time zones is from a historical “time zone database”.

NOTE: Unlike in NiagaraAX, in Niagara 4 there is no separately maintained “timezones.jar” distributed in Niagara builds for a time zone database, nor associated entries in a platform’s system.properties file. Instead, time zones are directly sourced from the Java VM (virtual machine) in the host platform.This means there is no longer a workflow for updating time zone definitions independently from Java updates that may be included in Niagara 4 updates.

Selecting a time zone in Niagara

Figure 145. Selecting time zone from Change Date/Time selection in Platform Administration View

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