Re: Timestamp to time_t

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 09:23:09AM -0500, Kevin Grittner wrote:
> Scott Mohekey <scott.mohekey@telogis.com> wrote:
> > I think the issue is that we treat TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE as
> > TIMESTAMP at GMT. We then convert it to a users local timezone
> > within application code.
>  
> That sounds like an accident waiting to happen.  Sure, you can make
> it work, but you're doing things the hard way, and the defaults will
> probably be to do the wrong thing.
>  
> TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE is not completely ANSI-compliant, in that
> it doesn't store a time zone with the timestamp.

I've looked through SQL:2008 (well, through 6WD2_02_Foundation_2007-12.pdf),
and I didn't find anything that implies that the input time zone needs
to be retrievable, nor anything that would specify the syntax for
doing so.

Can you point me to a section?  Lots of people, including your humble
emailer, would find it very handy to be able to access such
information, but I thought TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE only needed to be
retrieved either as default time zone, or as whatever AT TIME ZONE
specified.

Cheers,
David.
-- 
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778  AIM: dfetter666  Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter      XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com

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