Hi, I'm reading date/time datatypes documentation, and I'm a little bit surprised by this piece of documentation :
Note: When timestamp values are stored as double precision floating-point numbers (currently the default), the effective limit of precision may be less than 6. timestamp values are stored as seconds before or after midnight 2000-01-01. Microsecond precision is achieved for dates within a few years of 2000-01-01, but the precision degrades for dates further away. When timestamp values are stored as eight-byte integers (a compile-time option), microsecond precision is available over the full range of values. However eight-byte integer timestamps have a more limited range of dates than shown above: from 4713 BC up to 294276 AD. (...) In fact, I wonder why a date ranging from somme 4000 BC to 30000 AC is stored as a reference to the 1st january of 2000. Is it because that day is some "close to actual time" date ? And so, what do you mean by "within a few years"? Is it in reference to geological time (200 years on 300000 is less than one on a thousand) or to human life? I still wonder who could want to store a date 100 years ago with a microsecond precision ;-) Best regards, -- Stéphane SCHILDKNECHT Président de PostgreSQLFr http://www.PostgreSQLFr.org ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
