Re:Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days
by vacri on Thursday December 29, 2011 @05:50AM
(#3403224)
It's wholly due to bad programming. Put the timestamps in epoch time - that never changes, then read them back in whatever your current timezone is. If you're in a situation like you were where timezones change frequently, you'll also need to record the timezone when the entry was made for reference.
Given that servers frequently changing timezones can be sorted out by a modicum of thought by programmers and is actually pretty rare in the grand scheme of things, I don't think it's too heavy a price to pay.
Re:Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days
by azernik on Thursday December 29, 2011 @05:22AM
(#3403179)
Best practice - whatever time zone the people are using, keep the internal time stamps on a single time zone (usually UTC). Then just convert the times from and to the local zone for input and display, respectively.
I was in charge of a big supply database server on an aircraft carrier, and every time we changed timezones I had to update the timezone on the server. Heading from East to West was no problem, but when we went from West to East I had to shut the server down for an hour when changing timezones, to prevent timestamps from overlapping.
Admittedly, this was partially due to bad programming, but it's just a small real-world example of problems caused by the existence of timezones.