Tim Soderstrom wrote:
On Dec 22, 2008, at 9:47 PM, Jay Pipes wrote:
Hi all!
A while ago, the list discussed removing timezones from the server and
met with little resistance from folks.
So, some work went in to removing timezones from the server.
However, for reasons I won't go into here, timezones are still present
in the server and are causing, let us say, a bit of a headache. If we
can fully commit to getting rid of timezones, I think I can
dramatically improve the simplicity of how time and dates are handled
in the server.
Questions for everyone:
1) What do people think about changing the prescribed behaviour of
FROM_UNIXTIME() and UNIX_TIMESTAMP() to *not* take into account the
system time zone? Currently, even though we don't support time zones,
for some reason, we're currently accounting for the system time zone
in these functions. I can't really understand why, and it's causing
bugs. :)
I'd say GMT/UTC, but I suppose the application could handle it. I like
pushing GMT/UTC though because then you know the time is consistent
relative to at least one area of the world and can, thus, simply do the
math (which the application could easily do at that point). What I don't
want to go back to is being able to store these things in local time. I
think that'd be a step backward IMHO. Plus, if someone is replicating to
the other side of the world, having times stored in one common, well
known, standardized way, would make sense.
<offtopic>
Heck, actually I've been wanting to do an experiment where *I* switch to
UTC, just so I can prove to the world (or really just myself) that
timezones are stupid and we all should be using UTC no matter where we
live. Getting up at 15:30pm or 6:30am is relative. Of course, I also
think the US should adopt metric (coming from a native born US citizen
even!). Anyways...
</offtopic>
2) What do people think about adding microsecond to the TIMESTAMP data
type by default? This would require 4 more bytes of storage per row.
Well, does a Blog post really need microsecond granularity? So I'd say
no here, because by 2038, won't we have to expand this again, making it
10 or 12 bytes? I think there should be an additional data-type that
does to this (so users have the choice). Like, uhh, FULLTIMESTAMP or
something (I'm not very creative this morning...maybe it's because it's
before coffee :)
Well, in this case, you would just use a DATETIME, which has precision
to the second, no?
Cheers,
Jay
3) What do people think about *removing* the current behaviour of
outputting a microsecond time for DATETIMEs with all 0's? Personally,
I've always found this strange considering MySQL ignores (for storage)
the microsecond time part. We would add a microsecond display to
TIMESTAMP.
Yep, I think it's weird too!
Tim S.
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