Best way to get time zone key name from SQL Server

Question

Below is what I pieced together but I wanted to see what other ways are available.

SET NOCOUNT ON;
GO
DECLARE @tz VARCHAR(50)
EXEC [master].[dbo].[xp_regread]
 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE'
 ,'SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation'
 ,'TimeZoneKeyName'
 ,@tz OUT;
SELECT 
 GETDATE()
 ,'(' + LEFT(PARSENAME(REPLACE(@tz, ' ','.'),3),1) 
 + '' + LEFT(PARSENAME(REPLACE(@tz, ' ','.'),2),1) 
 + '' + LEFT(PARSENAME(REPLACE(@tz, ' ','.'),1),1) +')'

Output: 2014年10月14日 16:22:21.037 (CST)

• Erik: Your goal is to get the server's timezone?

Answer 1

Reading the reg key with this or SQLCLR is the only correct way I know (I personally would create a job which updates a table instead of enabling xp_regread though.).

This powershell script is an example of how to update a config table with this information.

$timeZone = (get-itemproperty 'HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation\').TimeZoneKeyName
$Connection = New-Object System.Data.SQLClient.SQLConnection
$Connection.ConnectionString = "server=.;database=myDatabase;trusted_connection=true;"
$Connection.Open()
$Command = New-Object System.Data.SQLClient.SQLCommand
$Command.Connection = $Connection
$Command.CommandText = "
 MERGE ConfigTable AS target
 USING (SELECT 'TimeZone', @timeZone) AS source (ConfigKey, ConfigValue)
 ON (target.ConfigKey = source.ConfigKey)
 WHEN MATCHED THEN UPDATE SET ConfigValue = source.ConfigValue
 WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN INSERT (ConfigKey, ConfigValue) VALUES (source.ConfigKey, source.ConfigValue)" 
$command.Parameters.AddWithValue("@timeZone", $timeZone)
$Command.ExecuteNonQuery()
$Connection.Close()

All other systems with offset etc are giving incorrect results.