When would you use TIMESTAMP w/ timezone as opposed to TIMESTAMP w/ local time zone? When data is stored in a column of data type TIMESTAMP w/ local tz, the data is normalized to the database time zone, and the time zone displacement is not stored as part of the column data. When users retrieve the data, Oracle returns it in the users' local session time zone. Isn't that much more useful? I can't think of a reason why I'd want to use TIMESTAMP w/ timezone and get back some gobble gook with a UTC offset.