On Saturday 28 November 2009 3:41:42 pm Eduardo Piombino wrote: > Hi Adrian, thanks for your answer. > > I see current criteria and all the SQL-standard compliance policy, but > wouldn't it still make sense to be able to store a date reference, along > with a time zone reference? > Wouldn't it be useful, wouldn't it be elegant? > > If i just want to store a reference to "Dec 19th" without adding an > innecesary reference to a "dummy" time, like 00:00:00 (for time zone > tracking's sake), wouldn't it be elegant to be able to say "Dec 19th > (GMT-3)" ? The problem arises around the dates when DST starts and ends. For instance here, Washington State USA, Nov 1st was the change over date. This occurred at 2:00 AM in the morning, so on Nov 1st we where in two time zones PDT then PST. Without a reference to time it makes it hard to keep track. > > On the other hand, I don't really see the reasons of this statement: > > "Although the date type *cannot *have an associated time zone, the time > type can." > > Why is this so? > I'm no guru, but I don't see any obvious technical impossibility to do so. > Is this so just because SQL standard says so? Can it be possible that SQL > standard is a little short on this kind of need? I will let the SQL gurus answer this one. > > Again, of course I can always use a timestamp set to 00:00:00 just to use > its time zone tracking capabilities, but It is just as dirty as any other > patch. As stated above time zones only have meaning with respect to date and time together. > > A date is a date, and a timestamp is a timestamp, and both, used > independently, should be able to keep track of its associated time zone, I > think. Am I wrong on this? Apart from what SQL Standard may say, for > instance. > I would suggest searching the archives. There has been discussions in the past about 'tagged' fields that would track timezones independent of a time/date/timestamp field. -- Adrian Klaver aklaver@xxxxxxxxxxx -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
