Re: Java's set of timezone names

On Wednesday 20 July 2005 15:42, Dave Cramer wrote:
> I think as John pointed out though there are some issues with using
> named TimeZones.

Kris rebutted that comment.

> Is there a way to get the servers timezone info from the server ?

Good question.

Based upon a very cursory reading of the documentation, it seems to be
that PostgreSQL uses a hardcoded internal list of time zones for
dealing with timezone *input*, but it uses the underlying OS's
facilities for dealing with timezone *output*.  But then again, the
docs seems to have changed between 7.4 and 8.0.  For example, in 7.4:

  http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.4/static/datatype-datetime.html

  PostgreSQL uses your operating system's underlying features to
  provide output time-zone support,

However, this sentence seems missing from 8.0:

  http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/static/datatype-datetime.html

The docs for 7.4 provide a list of timezone abbreviations that
PostgreSQL recognizes:

  http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.4/static/datetime-keywords.html

The 8.0 docs, too, provide the list of abbreviations but also a list
of unabbreviated timezone names:

  http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/static/datetime-keywords.html

These seem to be hardcoded.