3 ms·

Can you explain why? I write web apps, and I typically want to know an instant in time when something occurred and then localize the time for display. Why would

• crote 3y ago
  Storing UTC for past events is totally fine because it is unambiguous. However, if you are writing something like a calendar app and storing timestamps for future events, you run into the issue that time zones have the annoying habit of changing. Let's say you have a user in Berlin, and they want to schedule an event for 2025-06-01 08:00 local time. According to the current timezone definition Berlin will be on CEST at that moment, which is UTC+2, so you store it as 06:00 UTC. Then Europe abandons summer time, and on 2025-06-01 Berlin will now be on CET, or UTC+1. Your app server obviously gets this new definition via its regular OS upgrades. Your user opens the app, 06:00 UTC gets converted back to local time, and is displayed as 07:00 local time. This is obviously wrong, as they entered it as 08:00 local time! Storing it as TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE miiiight save you, but if and only if the database stores the timezone as "Europe/Berlin". In practice there's a decent chance it is going to save it as a UTC offset anyways...