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. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 853-3000 + If your life is a hard drive, | 830 Blythe Avenue + Christ can be your backup. | Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026