Hi all,

I'm basically looking for a one-liner to convert a timestamptz (or a timestamp 
w/o time zone if that turns out to be more convenient) to a string format equal 
to what MS uses for their datetimeoffset type. I got almost there with 
to_char(ts, 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS.US0 TZH:TZM'). Unfortunately(?), the server 
lives at time zone UTC, while we need to convert to both UTC and 
Europe/Amsterdam zones. The above always gives me +00 for the TZH output, while 
it should be +01 now and +02 in the summer...

I'm dealing with a data virtualisation system (TIBCO TDV) here that connects 
different types of data-sources, among which is an MS SQL database with said 
type. The virtualisation software uses PostgreSQL (14.10 on Ubuntu Linux 22.04) 
for caching data. TDV doesn't understand this datetimeoffset type and treats it 
internally as a VARCHAR(34) - hence the string output - which is obviously kind 
of hard to work with for aggregations and such.

However, in TDV we can create a translation between TDV functions that accept a 
timestamp type and a time zone name with a translation to native PostgreSQL 
functions, operands and whatnot. That's what I'm looking for.
It currently have this:
ToDatetimeOffsetNL(~any) : ciscache.ToDatetimeOffsetNL($1)
ToDatetimeOffset(~any,~any) : ciscache.ToDatetimeOffset($1, $2)

In the above, I worked around the issue using a couple of user-defined 
functions in PG. That should give a reasonable idea of the desired 
functionality, but it's not an ideal solution to my problem:
1). The first function has as a drawback that it changes the time zone for the 
entire transaction (not sufficiently isolated to my tastes), while
2). The second function has the benefit that it doesn't leak the time zone 
change, but has as drawback that the time zone is now hardcoded into the 
function definition, while
3). Both functions need to be created in the caching database before we can use 
them, while we have several environments where they would apply (DEV, pre-PROD, 
PROD).

/* Based this one on a stackoverflow post */
create or replace function ciscache.ToDatetimeOffset(ts_ timestamptz, tz_ text)
returns varchar(34)
language plpgsql
as $$
begin
      perform set_config('timezone', tz_, true /* local */);
      return to_char(ts_, 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS.US0 TZH:TZM');
end;
$$;

create or replace function ciscache.ToDatetimeOffsetNL(ts_ timestamptz)
returns varchar(34)
language plpgsql
set timezone to 'Europe/Amsterdam'
as $$
begin
      return to_char(ts_, 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS.US0 TZH:TZM');
end;
$$;

Is there a way to do this without functions, or if not, at least without having 
to hard-code the time zone or leaking the time zone change to other calls 
within the same transaction?

Any suggestions much appreciated.



Groet,



Alban Hertroijs

Data engineer ∙ NieuweStroom
aanwezig ma t/m vr, di tot 13:30 uur



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