"Trevor Talbot" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Neither is the birth certificate. The recorded, legal time of the > birth is the one that was written down. If it doesn't happen to match > an international notion of current time, that's unfortunate, but it's > not subject to arbitrary changes later. Even if it does match, it > still belongs to a specific time zone. That's the key semantic point: > regurgitating that time as anything other than exactly what it was > entered as is simply not correct.
I'm not convinced about that. One consideration I think you are failing to account for is that there is a big difference between past and future times, at least in terms of what is likely to be the meaning of a change. The above reasoning might apply to a past time but I think it's bogus for a future time. If the TZ offset for a future time changes, it's likely because of a DST law change, and we are in Peter's what-time-is-the-appointment scenario. A TZ offset for a past time probably should not change, but if it does, it suggests a retroactive data correction. Surely you don't intend to prevent people from fixing bad data? regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq