[development] no date / time types in schema API

[David Timothy Strauss]

----- "Karen Stevenson" <karen at elderweb.com> wrote:
> >> A solution based on timestamps is much more elegant: timestamps
> need
> >> no (database-specific) parsing whatsoever (both on reading and
> >> writing to the database), they play nice with arithmetic (and thus
> >
> >You obviously have never dealt with timestamps for dates...
> >
> >They are a most royal PITA, especially when dealing with timezones
> and
> >DST.
> 
> Couldn't have said it better myself. The two people on this list who
> have probably spent more time than anyone else in Drupal trying to do
> things like proper timezone conversions on timestamps are in complete
> agreement that timestamps are a PITA. 

Add me to that list. Dealing with global fundraising data for Wikimedia and global subscription systems for Stratfor has taught me that knowing with 100% confidence that values in the DB are UNIX timestamps makes applications work.

Most timezone operations belong in the view/theme layer and maybe on forms.