From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Kevin Grittner <Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov>
Cc: cousinflo@free.fr
Cc: pgsql-docs@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Date/Time Types : internals
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:14:44 -0400
Message-ID: <9773.1334780084@sss.pgh.pa.us> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <4F8ED21402000025000470FA@gw.wicourts.gov>
References: <4F8F0F71.20500@free.fr>
<4F8ED21402000025000470FA@gw.wicourts.gov>
"Kevin Grittner" <Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> writes:
> I guess the point is that for hundreds of years, the same day could
> have a different date depending which country's calendar you were
> looking at. I'm not entirely clear why there's a problem if you
> pick the Gregorian calendar and apply it retroactively.
Which is, in fact, exactly what our code does. I think that bit in the
docs is trying to explain why we do that rather than try to get the
code to reflect what people really used back then.
A possibly comparable point is that for timezone info we use the Olsen
database (tzdata), which *does* make an effort to reflect historical
realities. In consequence, at least once every several months we
get somebody complaining about what a strange GMT offset he's seeing
for timestamps before 1900 or so. If there's anyone out there who
actually likes that behavior, we've not heard about it. (Not that
I am going to try to get Olsen et al to change their policy.)
regards, tom lane
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To: pgsql-docs@postgresql.org
Cc: tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us, Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov, cousinflo@free.fr
Subject: Re: Date/Time Types : internals
In-Reply-To: <9773.1334780084@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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