In this web application, I am currently using the GregorianCalendar class to store a date data. The time zone is set based on the user's location. A date data is not stored corrently in the DB thorough Hibernate. For instance, the date "Sat Apr 08 11:56:38 PDT 2006" with "GMT+08" is saved as "2006-04-07 20:56:38.609-07". It seems the DB always takes the server time zone regardless of the time zone in Calendar data. Someone suggests that I only need the Date and the DateFormat data types instead. I am not sure that I have to do such data formating during the date date saving and retrieving processes.

What is a right way in this regard?

Thanks for your inputs.

That's because dates are handled as integer values measured from an epoch (1 Jan 1970 for Java, varies for DBs: it's some time in 1753 for SQLServer :). Your options are to always convert all times to DB timezone before you save them, or to save the timezone as a separate value. There is no built-in feature that does this for you.

So, if I want to have user's TZ preserved, I have to have a TZ column.


Thanks for your information.