[fpc-pascal] Timezone information in a dataset datetime field?- updated

[Reinier Olislagers]

On 25-7-2011 18:23, Jürgen Hestermann wrote:
> Reinier Olislagers schrieb:
...
>> If so, I'll try and get timezone description from the OS...
> 
> Timezone information is not enough to get reliable dates. Dependend on
> where dates origin from they can be wrong (wrong clock on computer,
> wrong time zone on computer, file times extracted from archives not
> storing time zone). Also, when calculating UTC time on a local
> (computer) there is an ambiguity for times 2:00h to 3:00h when daylight
> saving is invoked in spring. A time of 2:30h can be before or after
> having switched back the clock but a program cannot determine which case
> applies from the computer clock alone.
Yep, I know, depressing...
> 
> And even if dates are correctly stored in UTC it is not easy to reliably
> get back the "local time". Daylight savings were changed in the past
> (and may also change in the future). If you have a date/time of 
> 2001-05-01 18:00 UTC it is not easy to predict what local time it was in
> time zone x. You would need a history of all daylight saving algorithms
> of the past and the future for all time zones (or even countries).
Agreed.
> 
> Having time zones added (or storing it in UTC) is better than not doing
> this but it's still far away from being "correct".
Fortunately Ludo Brands showed me that storing timezone info in the XML
file I was exporting (for ADO.Net) was not necessary.

I just tested it as well...

I suppose it's best left to the user to interpret what a date/time means
exactly, just as he will have to do with currency fields without any
currency indicator...

However, what I can do is add an XML comment indicating what
offset/timezone the computer is currently using. This may help
interpretation...

Thanks for the detailed explanation,
Reinier