[AccessD] Time zones (was: internationalization)

Gustav Brock gustav at cactus.dk
Wed Sep 1 13:33:42 CDT 2004


Hi Francisco

> No, but after a quick archive search I found it, thanks :D

Fine.

> thanks Gustav, so to be clear, if I have a record from daylights
> savings time, and I query it in NON-Daylights saving time, this code
> will keep the record at it's accurate time, meaning
> if It was processed in the summer  (GMT-8) at 4pm, and I query the
> record in the Winter will the record show up processed at 4pm or 3pm?,
> the UTC time stored in the db doesn't change, but when they query it,
> will.

Access doesn't record any time zone or daylight savings info so "a
time is a time" as is when stored.
For your example, there would be a difference if measured by the hour
but normally you count by the day. If you need precise hour (or
really: minute count) you would need to either store the time zone
info in another field or convert the local time to UTC, and then,
whenever you need to read the data, either regard any time as local or
convert it from UTC to local.

This is at least how I see it. Perhaps Charlotte can suggest a simpler
approach?

/gustav


>> Well, to Charlotte this seems to be no problem, but it was
>> considerations as those you describe I was thinking of.
>> 
>> So far my thoughts would be to store date/time as UTC time, then do
>> the conversion (shift) later to whatever time zone you may need.
>> But what is your question really? Daylight savings is just another
>> twist to time zone issues. And remember, some time zones are offset by
>> 30 or even 15 minutes only.
>> 
>> Did you see my code previously posted (2004-07-14)?




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