[storm] storm + datetime + TZ behavior

[James Henstridge]

On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 8:55 PM, IvO <ivo.munoz at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually I can reply to my own question.
>
> There was nothing wrong with the way I stored UTC datetimes to the database.
> The following is the output of an small test script showing what STORM
> gets back frrom the DB.
>
> 2.1 2010-05-13 19:32:00+00:00 UTC tzutc()
>
> The pb was with my Postgres server configuration, I setup the timezobe
> variable to UTC and everything is consistent now.

PostgreSQL "timestamp with time zone" columns do not actually store a
time zone.  Instead, it stores the value in UTC and converts to and
from the connection's local time zone when storing and retrieving the
value.

Setting the connection's time zone to UTC basically makes the data
type work like a "timestamp without time zone" field, except that it
is formatted with a "+00:00" time zone when read.

I've usually found it easier and more reliable to use the "timestamp
without time zone" data type, explicitly store data in UTC, and do any
time zone conversions on the client side.  This way the server
configuration won't affect how your application behaves.  For the
client side time zone conversions, I'd suggest looking at the pytz
library.

James.