The display of dates and times may be configured, as well as the required entry elements. This lets two users have different presentations of the same date and time value. In addition, users see all dates and times in their own local time zone. Internally, dates and times are stored in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) independently of the display format selected. Then, when dates are displayed, a runtime conversion is performed so users see all date and time information in their own local time zone. For example, assume a company has users in San Jose, Boston, and Bonn. A user in San Jose promotes an object on December 11, 1998, 4:45 pm pacific time. Clients in Boston will read the Actual Date in eastern time (December 11, 1998, 7:45 pm) and clients in Bonn will read it in German local time (December 12, 1998, 1:45 am). This assumes that each location logs onto a local database server with a correctly-configured time zone setting. | |||||||||||