Re: Time Zone Differences???

In article <90je19$hnp$1_at_nnrp1.deja.com>,   stemp1ar_at_my-deja.com wrote:
> How do you account for users in a different time zone?
>
> Like when the server is in CST and users are in EST, and CST springs
> ahead and falls back an hour?
>
> I know of a program program written in C that will get the zone info,
> but is there another way of going about this?
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
>

There are several possible solutions to this. If only one server exists, all time is specific to the server if one uses SQL to set time. If the client software sets the time, you have to be aware of this.

Assuming time to the second is important, one could store both the users local time and a standard global time eg GMT. One can then alway tell the user the time he/she did something and determine when two events happened via the global time.

If space makes two time stamps impractical, store all events in a particular time zone eg the server time or GMT. Then always convert the time to the time zone of the user.

I personally developed my multizone software to convert the server time to the client time via sysdate and a timezone assigned to the user. One has to convert standard timezones to daylight savings and back twice a year.

If the date is all that is important, you use the local time to determine which day it is, and store the date truncated or the date at midnight. Often a date in the future is just that, a day in the future. There is not hour::minute::second component. The major issue here is that you do not convert this day when changing timezones. The day is the day.

--
Michael Krolewski
Rosetta Inpharmatics
mkrolewski_at_rosetta.org
              Ususual disclaimers


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Before you buy.