Forum Q & A: Question regarding TimeStamps in SQL Azure

Standard

Question:

1. I’m in the process of purchasing an SSL certificate for my Company’s Azure installations. One of the questions that came up during the purchase was as follows:

Any of the servers for this certificate located outside USA/Canada?

There are a couple of hosted services on our Azure instance and both of them have their Country/Region setting specified as “Anywhere US” .

But looking at the timestamps on the data in SQL Azure, I’m not sure if all of them are North American.

What would be a response to this question?

2. Noticed that the server time stamp on my SQL AZure instance is an hour behind UK time, can I specify server time?

Answer:

1. Right! The timestamps are in UTC so they may not look American 🙂

2. SQL Azure does not allow setting TimeZone out of the box, but yes there is a workaround:

http://netindonesia.net/blogs/wely/archive/2011/07/10/managing-timezone-in-sql-azure.aspx

see, if it could help you. And an honest disclaimer from the author: “it’s a trick/workaround, and not a solution”

Link:

1. http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ssdsgetstarted/thread/87ccb4ea-1f3f-45a2-99be-1103905a5b8b/

2. http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ssdsgetstarted/thread/ab7bc8f6-bc29-4ddd-8409-511a32a0056a

What do you think? Leave a comment below.