historical timezone conversion

[John A Grandy]

I am investigating a solution to convert timezones for historical data.

I am aware of the open source tz lib :

http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm

but I interested in libs more accessible to the .net programmer.

I have read that this .net implementation of tz

http://www.babiej.demon.nl/Tz4Net/main.htm

is buggy and difficult to use. Anyone have an opinion ?

More generally , I am hoping to find people who have built solutions for
timezone conversions of historical data. Apparently , it is a rather
difficult problem , at least an order of magnitude more difficult that I
thought it would be just 2 days ago.

Thanks for any assistance.

 

[Family Tree Mike]

I'm not sure I understand what problem you are tackling yet. Most
historical databases that I have worked with normalize times
to UTC.

In the state of Indiana, many areas changed the timezone to which
they belong in recent yearss. Are you trying to identify if a datapoint
you have may have come from an area where the timezone changed
geographically?

Then there is the problem of the US congress mandating a change
in daylight savings time start and stop recently. Do you need to
identify whether a particular event was affected by this?

I agree these are complicated issues, and that is the main reason
everything is persisted in UTC.