On Aug 5, 2004, at 2:03 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
I'd suggest just one function epoch_to_timestamp that actually yields
timestamptz, and then if casting the result to timestamp is needed it'll
happen automatically.
That makes sense.
Chris mentioned the possibility of using the MySQL FROM_UNIXTIME() syntax instead of making something new.
<http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Date_and_time_functions.html>
I haven't checked the SQL spec, but I suspect they don't specify this function. Might be nice to make it consistent with another implementation rather than making new syntax to do the same thing. I don't know whether Oracle (or DB2?) might have similar functions that might at some time in the future make their way into the spec. Skimming through the Oracle documentation and searching for similar functionality in DB2 and Oracle on the web leads me to think they *don't* currently have a function to do this directly. Anyone familiar with DB2 or Oracle know if this is in fact the case?
One drawback would be that people might expect additional functionality. For example, MySQL FROM_UNIXTIME(integer) works similarly to epoch_to_timestamp(double). However, there's also a FROM_UNIXTIME(integer, format) function that I really don't think would be needed. Using a different syntax would call attention to this difference.
Another idea would be to overload TO_TIMESTAMP to take a single double precision float parameter rather than two text parameters.
Michael Glaesemann grzm myrealbox com
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