Re: timestamps cannot be created without time zones

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>

From: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
To: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, Rainer Mager <rmager@vgkk.com>, pgsql-bugs@postgresql.org
Date: 2001-08-24T14:55:17Z
Lists: pgsql-bugs
> Tom Lane writes:
> 
> > Timezone handling in PG is dependent on the underlying OS' timezone
> > database, which doesn't go back further than 1901 in any Unix that
> > I've heard of.  You should realize of course that the very notion of
> > timezone was only standardized in the 1800s, so attaching a timezone
> > to dates much older than that would be a dubious practice anyway...
> 
> Thus Rainer's point is that when having times both before and after 1901
> in the same data set you get inconsistencies.  This seems like a good
> reason to introduce a true 'timestamp without time zone' type.

Let me see if I follow here.  If I am in the Eastern timezone and enter
a time for 9pm, 1/1/1850, and someone else in the Central timezone
enters the same time, if I look at the two dates from the Eastern
timezone I will see mine as 9pm and the other as 10pm?

Wow, I wonder if that is bad? 

It seems I would mix these in a table so it is the underlying data
representation that may be the problem.  Yikes.

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