vamsikiran, all that changes are the dates at which daylight saving takes effect. If you get an updated JDK from wherever you got your last JDK (e.g.
Sun),
you should be fine - it will take care of this for you.
[Paul C]: 2. The name of the timezone is "CST". Date formatters will often print "CDT" for dates where daylight saving time is in force, but that's not the name of the timezone. This has also been the case for quite some time. Mm, I disagree. I guess the exact names may depend on who you ask. But as far as I'm concerned, the name of the time zone is Central Time Zone, and it uses Central Standard time in winter, and Central Daylight time in summer. ("Winter" and "summer" being simplifications, of course.) For the US the relevant authority seems to be nist.gov, and they back up this usage (e.g.
here. Java unfortunately uses "Standard Time" in its display names for many time zones, even in summer. But what does Sun know? Fortunately it puts the correct info in formatted time strings. It's just the display name that can't be trusted.
I think it's an error to refer to CST in summer. Misleading, at least. In places where daylight saving is
not observed, it's important to be able to correctly identify what time it is. Thus in summer in Arizona (no daylight saving) it may be 10:00 MST, while at the same time in New Mexico (or on the Navajo reservation), it's 11:00 MDT. If a person in New Mexico describes that time as 11:00 MST, they are simply wrong. That's the point of distinguishing between "Standard Time" and "Daylight Saving Time". Admittedly, people in DST-observing states generally can't be trusted to know how to identify the time in summer, but that doesn't diminish our responsibility to refer to the time zone correctly.
Sorry, this is one of those topics I get ranty about.
But it's precisely the sort of thing that causes bugs if careful attention is not paid.
[ December 13, 2006: Message edited by: Jim Yingst ]