> -----Original Message----- > From: Elim PDT [mailto:e...@pdtnetworks.net] > Sent: Monday, March 29, 2010 5:57 PM > To: mysql@lists.mysql.com > Subject: timezone questions > > data from one server in timezone A ported to another server > in timezone B, what will happen for the records with datetime columns?
If you have a timezone stored on your server, then all dates/times are stored relative to that. If you now change it, say you were in CA and moved to NY, your times retrieved are now actually 3 hours off technically depending. Even if you set your new timezone to NY. mySQL doesn't store the timezone you started with. It just stores that you created the record at noon let's say. That noon is the noon where the server timezone is. This may or may not be an issue for you depending on your application. If you're moving an entire company and this is a local database with respect to the company (say, a time-off tracker, or payroll or something) you may not care. All you care is that at 3pm some user asked for time off. And since you all now live in NY, it's your 3pm local time. Now, having said that, this in most cases is a huge deal since the web is global and rarely do web pages live in such a local setting. More often, there are people from different time zones accessing them. > What is the recommended way of handling this kind of issues? Thanks Real sites set their timezone to UTC and store everything in the database as UTC as well. Then you adjust the time on the client based upon their local timezone. Both PHP and mySQL (and other languages) have functions to convert based upon the TZ variable. ÐÆ5ÏÐ -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql?unsub=arch...@jab.org
