Re: Handling multiple timezones

Steven P. Crain wrote:
>
> Does anyone have experience using Sybase with multiple Time zones?

        Yeah, its a real pain in the proverbial.

> Our database is running using US/Eastern timezone. I have data I need to
> load in that comes with the times all GMT. I can't just use dateadd to
> offset from GMT to US/Eastern because US/Eastern changes between EST and
> EDT twice a year.

	If this is just a once off load, you can try setting the timezone
	to GMT and bounce your server, do the load, drop the TZ hack and
	then bounce again.

> Has anyone found an elegant & efficient way to handle this problem in
> Sybase. It seems to me that Sybase internationalization code really ought
> to do time zone conversions for you, but it doesn't.

	Unfortunately, Sybase doesn't allow for a timezone within its
	datetime datatypes. So you are left with either adding an extra
	field to your table(s) and managing it yourself, or doing some
	bit manipulation on the datetime fields to store the timezone
	internally. Either of these are a real hack and require client
	apps to be aware but they can work.

-am Received on Mon May 25 1998 - 00:00:00 CDT