Date-Time type (was Re: [DB-SIG] DB-API Spec. 1.1a1)

[Mike Meyer]

> Right now, I'm curious what you think about the time handling.
> We are bound to stumble into daylight savings time here + time zones
> which both are hard to handle. While the time zone can be deduced
> from time.timezone, the DST can only be guessed at.

Actually, the DST information is available on most Unix systems,
derivable from the time & timezone information. The code for doing
this is publicly available, and fairly easy to port to things that
aren't Unix. One would hope that the C library routines used by the
Python time module used them, and the compiler vendors did the port
(or an emulation).

> There are basically two options:
> 
>         1. use GM time (AKA Zulu time AKA UTC) as internal basis
>            and have some external method deduce the DST & time zone
>         2. store whatever the user gives to the object and return
>            it in the same way

The longer I look at this, the more confused I get. Could you provide
more details about what you're contemplating? I know what I think it
should do, but...

	Thanx,
	<mike



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