Feature: Preserve timezone information in timestamp

[NatanPuzis]

API

Python

Description

As I understand, there is no way to preserve timezone information with TIMESTAMP.
Seems like a convenient feature to have.

[prrao87]

Hi @NatanPuzis , do you mean something like how Python saves the Z string at the end of the timestamp to indicate it's in UTC?

[NatanPuzis]

If we take Python as an example:

from datetime import datetime

ts_from_log = '2020-02-03T19:43:01.572071+04:00'
dt = datetime.fromisoformat(ts_from_log)
# time offset preserved
print(dt)

epoch = dt.timestamp()
# time offset lost
ts = datetime.fromtimestamp(epoch)
print(ts)

output:

2020-02-03 19:43:01.572071+04:00
2020-02-03 17:43:01.572071

As you can see, datetime objects can preserve time offset. By contrast, when using epoch/epoch_ms we loose this info. The usual work-around is keeping this info as an adjacent attribute, which is less convenient.

This is very useful piece of information in many cases, most prominent probably is calculation of daylight saving times - without time offset it is only a guess work.

On the other side, as I understand, most popular RDBMs do not offer this capability. I assume, Kuzu just followed the suit.

Up to you guys to consider whether it is worth the effort.