On 10/05/18 18:47, Adriano dos Santos Fernandes wrote:
99.9% of our users will use the "official" database.
And therefore will have no idea just which "official" database they are using. This is just carrying on the current mess that is inherent when one has no idea just which rules WERE USED to create the data. I became involved with the TZ list because a large block of genealogical data I was using was giving conflicting offsets. Over time the historic rules have been change in much the same way the current rules are change. North Korea has just added a rule change but it has still to filter through all the "official" databases so we are all using the new rule, but one needs to know that the UTC time logged two weeks ago for the meeting next week HAS changed! The VERSION of the rule set being used is just as important as the timezone and in a database with many years of data the rules WILL be changing so one needs to know just WHICH rule was applied when the data was stored against now. The material I was working with was essentially trash as no one had recorded the version of TZ that was being used, and as different computer OS's used different version of TZ the whole thing became a mess.
Today the CORRECT identification of a timezone rule set is 'tz ident/version' and recording anything less is just a gamble on what you get.
I can give more examples of problems which NOT knowing which rule set was used to create the 'international' timetable when local DST times are changed at short notice ... TZDist is intended to prevent this problem, but since there are no active sources we are still stuck with the miss-match of data between different OS's and system.
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