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Part of the problem is the ANSI SQL standard specifies that 'TIMESTAMP' does not have any offset/timezone applied. The postgres docs pretty much admit this is a bad idea and recommend all timestamps be stored as 'TIMESTAMPTZ' (aka TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE).

It's problematic when moving data between systems with different Locale settings. Because ANSI timestamps are stored as 'local' time, timestamps will shift if you read from a DB in New York and write to one in San Francisco. Both will interpret an ANSI SQL timestamp as being in their locale unless told otherwise.



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