How to schedule an Oracle dbms_scheduler Job timezone and DST safely

You may use this to make sure you pass a timestamp with time zone and that the start date will have a timezone name (US/Eastern) instead of an offset (ex: +5:00). This way, as the above fragments from the oracle docs mention, the Scheduler will keep track of DST.

-- Create a SCHEDULE

declare 
 v_start_date timestamp with time zone;
BEGIN 

select localtimestamp at time zone 'US/Eastern' into v_start_date from dual; --US/Eastern

DBMS_SCHEDULER.CREATE_SCHEDULE(
      schedule_name => 'SAMPLE_SCHEDULE',
      start_date => v_start_date,
      repeat_interval => 'FREQ=DAILY; BYHOUR=10; BYMINUTE= 15',
      comments => 'Runs daily at the specified hour.'); 
END;

To make sure you have set it properly you can run this: ALTER SESSION SET nls_timestamp_tz_format = 'MM-DD-YYYY HH24:MI:SS tzr tzd';

Now, create two schedules, one as above and one using sysdate as the start_date parameter and execute the query below.

-- Check the TIMEZONE 
select * from USER_SCHEDULER_SCHEDULES;


v1:
27-MAR-14 11.44.24.929282 AM **US/EASTERN**

v2:

27-MAR-14 05.44.54.000000 PM **+05:00**