Re: timestamp with/without time zone

Thomas, can we change the description to just 'timestamp'?

> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> > Thomas Lockhart writes:
> >> SQL9x "timestamp" has no notion of time zones. PostgreSQL "timestamp"
> >> does.
>
> > AFAICT, it does not. The value is stored in UTC (more or less) and is
> > converted to the local time zone for display. But a data type is defined
> > in terms of storage, not display.
>
> I think Thomas' point is mainly a syntactic one, that our timestamp type
> will accept and display timezones --- which makes it compatible at the
> I/O level with SQL-style TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE. But I don't find
> that argument very persuasive. An app that is expecting SQL-compliant
> handling of the zone info will still be broken, only in subtle
> hard-to-find ways instead of nice simple obvious ways. IMHO we don't
> support TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE, and we really oughtn't give people the
> impression that we do. Whether what we have is better than the spec's
> definition is irrelevant here; the point is that it's different.
>
> regards, tom lane
>

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