Oracle has fixed an issue in which its time zone updating tool for Oracle JDK (Java Development Kit) 7 had been removed and apologized this week for any trouble caused.

In a bulletin issued Monday, Oracle's Henrik Stahl, senior director of product management in the Java platform group, said Timezone Updater Tool, or TZUpdater, had been removed on March 8 from Oracle Technology Network (OTN), as part of maintenance connected to the end of public updates for Oracle JDK 6. The company had noted the tool was only available for Oracle Java SE (Standard Edition) support customers. TZUpdater enables an Oracle JDK or JRE (Java Runtime Environment) user to patch their installation with the most recent time zone data. TZUpdater taccommodates daylight saving time (DST) changes in different countries.

"An unintentional side effect of this change was that it became impossible to keep Oracle JDK 7 up to date without a support contract, which is not in line with our policy: The most recent version of the Oracle JDK will always be available royalty-free, including any tools required to keep it up to date," Stahl said. The tool is now available for public download again from OTN.

"To all of those in the Java community who were affected by this, we apologize for any confusion or inconvenience we caused and we are grateful to those of you who reached out to us directly to bring this to our attention," Stahl said.

While Oracle has a goal of making sure the most recent versions of the JDK and JRE contain the most recent time zone data so that a separate tool is rarely needed, this is not always possible given the timing of time zone updates. Oracle is reviewing its development process to determine what guarantees can be put in place for the gap between a time zone update and it being available as part of a JDK/JRE release. The company also will continue to make TZUpdater available for the most recent JDK version.

This story, "Oracle restores Java time zone update tool," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.