Timestamps in Gnucash Mysql

Phil Longstaff plongstaff at rogers.com
Wed Aug 12 10:40:45 EDT 2009


Derek,

yes, I was planning to store w/o time zone, in UTC, but just wanted other people's input, because I know this has been a can of worms.

Phil




________________________________
From: Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU>
To: Phil Longstaff <plongstaff at rogers.com>
Cc: gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 9:22:24 AM
Subject: Re: Timestamps in Gnucash Mysql

Phil Longstaff <plongstaff at rogers.com> writes:

> Also, sqlite does not have a datetime or timestamp but needs to use strings, 
> and I've been coding mainly for sqlite, with mysql and pgsql taking 2nd place.
>
> Gnucash has both dates, and date-times.  For dates, I can use CHAR(8) for 
> sqlite, DATE for mysql and pgsql.  For date-times, I can use CHAR(14) for 
> sqlite, TIMESTAMP for mysql and TIMESTAMP for pgsql.  Question: should the 
> pgsql be "TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE" or "TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE"?

This opens up the whole can of worms regarding timestamps...

IMHO the db should store timeout a timezone, and it should store
everything in UTC.

Then there is the issue of the engine and ui interpretting UTC (or not)
as appropriate.

Like I said, can of worms...

> Phil

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
      warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available


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