From: "Keith Ivey" > Jigal van Hemert wrote: > > > Maybe because dates before Jan 1, 1970 have an undefined timestamp and dates > > beyond 2038 cannot be used with 32-bit integers? Quite a few people were > > born before 1970 and sometimes one needs to store their date of birth too? > > Yes, but birthdates are generally DATE, not DATETIME, unless you're doing > astrology. Sebastian was talking about DATETIME versus Unix timestamp INT.
You can find imperfections in all examples. Fact remains that the range of a Unix timestamp is way too limited for many purposes. OTOH Unix timestamps were designed for timestamps related to files and in that the case the range is not much of a limit. I find that for certain applications that DATE and DATETIME both lack a large enough range and sufficient resolution. Historical dates BC cannot be stored, nor can you use a resolution of less than a second. Also the problems with DATE(TIME) and daylight saving are not very amusing. Still the larger range and all the functions available for handling DATE(TIME) values make me use them more often than unix timestamps. Regards, Jigal. -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
