Re: timestamp with/without time zone

Thomas, can we change the description to just 'timestamp'?


> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> > Thomas Lockhart writes:
> >> SQL9x "timestamp" has no notion of time zones. PostgreSQL "timestamp"
> >> does.
> 
> > AFAICT, it does not.  The value is stored in UTC (more or less) and is
> > converted to the local time zone for display.  But a data type is defined
> > in terms of storage, not display.
> 
> I think Thomas' point is mainly a syntactic one, that our timestamp type
> will accept and display timezones --- which makes it compatible at the
> I/O level with SQL-style TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE.  But I don't find
> that argument very persuasive.  An app that is expecting SQL-compliant
> handling of the zone info will still be broken, only in subtle
> hard-to-find ways instead of nice simple obvious ways.  IMHO we don't
> support TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE, and we really oughtn't give people the
> impression that we do.  Whether what we have is better than the spec's
> definition is irrelevant here; the point is that it's different.
> 
>             regards, tom lane
> 

--  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,
Pennsylvania19026