just a quick question on start time on bars. Are the start time always in relation to BST (British Standard Time).

this is the code i used to test:
long timeOfTheCurrentBar = history.getStartTimeOfCurrentBar(Instrument.EURUSD, Period.MONTHLY);
Date datetime = new Date(timeOfTheCurrentBar);

console.getOut().println(datetime.getHours());
console.getOut().println(datetime);

timeOfTheCurrentBar = history.getStartTimeOfCurrentBar(Instrument.EURUSD, Period.ONE_HOUR);
datetime = new Date(timeOfTheCurrentBar);

console.getOut().println(datetime.getHours());
console.getOut().println(datetime);

this was the output:

2008-09-22 13:50:55 Mon Sep 22 13:00:00 BST 2008
2008-09-22 13:50:55 13
2008-09-22 13:50:55 Mon Sep 01 01:00:00 BST 2008
2008-09-22 13:50:55 1

it looks like it is in BSt time but i am sure kust 2 weeks ago when i was working in australia it return time in australian time?

All times, that we return as longs (tick.getTime(), bar.getTime()) are in GMT+0 time. This is Java standard for time represented in long. It can be the same as BST half the year and can be different another half when daylight savings are counted in in BST. When you print new Date(timeInLong).getHours() or new Date(timeInLong).toString() it uses DateFormat in your local timezone. In Australia you will have another time because of different time zone. If you want to print time in GMT, then you can use this code:

DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy.MM.dd HH:mm:ss SSS");
dateFormat.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
console.getOut().println(dateFormat.format(new Date(timeInLong)));

or if you want to get hours in GMT:

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
cal.setTimeInMillis(timeInLong);
int hours = cal.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY);
console.getOut().println(hours);

TimeZone and Calendar are classes in java.util package and DateFormat is in java.text package

thanxs for all you help, i just have one more question:

long offsetDAILY = Period.MONTHLY.getInterval();

i use the above code in my program, how does the above function determine the correct interval for the right month? eg febuary and december would have different interval values.

It doesn't! You have to use IHistory.getBarStart or IHistory.getNextBarStart or use Calendar to calculate correct start of the bar, you can't just add Period.MONTHLY.getInterval() to get time of the next bar. Period.MONTHLY.getInterval() always returns 30 days.