ResultSet.getDate() could also be affected by this.

By default, the server time zone is used, and that is normal. The MariaDB connector work accordingly.
(mysql server with the mysql connector work a similar way.)

But your are right, using mysql Connector/J 5.1 work by default only in UTC with MariaDB ,

So depending on your needs :

• Make the MySQL Connector/J problem to consider the time zone :
  if you really want to use the mysql connector, you have to populate the mysql time zone tables, and set the default time zone in configuration.
  see https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/mysql_tzinfo_to_sql/ to populate mysql time zone tables if you are on unix.
  and for setting the default time zone, add the default_time_zone parameter in my.conf :
  [mysqld]
  default_time_zone=America/Lima

(and restart MariaDB)

• you don't want to use server time zone :
  If you want to use one particular date in UTC, you can use the UTC_TIMESTAMP() function, that don't use the server time zone.
  if you want all time datas in UTC change the default 'SYSTEM' time-zone to UTC :
  SET GLOBAL time_zone = '+0:00'; (change time-zone to UTC), and restart MariaDB.

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough in the original description. What I meant by "This differs from what MySQL Connector/J version 5.1 does at least." was that the described behaviour differs from the mysql connector with mysql server (not mysql connector+mariadb server). I'm not interested in using mysql connector with mariadb server at all. The issue is that the same code behaves differently when mariadb connector+server and mysql connector+server is used.

>> By default, the server time zone is used, and that is normal. The MariaDB connector work accordingly.
>> (mysql server with the mysql connector work a similar way.)

How is that normal? The documentation I linked to clearly states that "Some functions are not affected. These include: UTC_TIMESTAMP() as well as DATETIME, DATE and TIME columns.". When mysql connector+server is used no conversion is done.

Forget to close this issue since it was relative to CONJ-86.
That has been fixed in 1.3.0