Julian Levens wrote: >The wiki stores it's data in text files but has never supported a datetime >field. We are now looking at adding such a field and we really want to get >this right first time.
What you should put in the field depends on what you want to use it for. No single arrangement is right for every purpose. If your answer would be "general purpose", then you need more than one type. >We see three fundamental parts to a datetime field. You'll tend to want some combination of these parts, but probably not all three at once. If you want to record the time at which some event historically occurred, just represent it in UT, with no timezone offset or name. If you're scheduling an event for the future, and can't constrain it all to UT, then you probably want date, time of day, and timezone name: the offset that will be used by that timezone at the relevant time won't be truly known until it arrives, so the offset isn't an adequate substitute for the name. Recording an offset is for when you're timestamping an historical action, and you want to know both when it occurred and what the local time was for the actor. >Is there anything else we need to consider? You should consider what resolution you're really after. If you want your timestamps to be sub-second meaningful then you need to be clear about which flavour of UT you're using (probably UTC, in which case you need to handle leap seconds properly). -zefram
