Any plans to support ZonedDateTime?

[HerrNiklasRaab]

https://nodatime.org/3.0.x/userguide/zoneddatetime-patterns

[StevenRasmussen]

There are not any plans currently to support the ZonedDateTime type. Based on the documentation I think we could serialize/deserialize the value in string format but it would be very difficult (if even possible) to support any operators/methods for this type. Are you just envisioning being able to store a value for this type in the DB but NOT perform any operations against it?

[anthonylevine]

Hi @StevenRasmussen ,

Just getting my bearings with Noda Time and had the same question about ZonedDateTime. Can I ask why it would be difficult to store in SQL Server? I'm still trying to understand the concepts in Noda Time. Would it be because technically you'd need 2 columns (one for the date/time) and another for the timezone? Thanks again for the package. It's been a lifesaver.

[StevenRasmussen]

@anthonylevine - Right... the issue is that there's no native SQL type that can store all the information for the ZonedDateTime NodaTime type. We could put it in a string in SQL, or split it up as you mention, but it becomes extremely difficult (if not impossible) to support any operations against this type in TSQL. We could serialize/deserialize to/from this from a C# perspective but we would be unable to support any operations against it like:

var orders = context.Orders.Where(x => x.ZonedDateTime >= someArbitraryZonedDateTime);

The best we could do is storage and retrieval of the information. Any operations would need to be performed client side. Hopefully that makes sense.

[anthonylevine]

Thank you so much for the detailed reply and totally makes sense. And thanks again for the library.

[Xriuk]

Wouldn't this be of any help? https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/queries/at-time-zone-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver16
It seems that given a datetime and a time zone it returns a datetimeoffset which could be then used in comparisons, I'm not sure if it could be used (easily) inside comparisons.