Handling Time Differences between two different Time Zone in C#

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Hello,

I'm working with an Online E-Commerce Web site and currently looking to do an analysis of how the time difference between two different time zones would affect our Web Application.

This is what is the current Scenario I'm working with.

"Our Servers are currently located in Washington now and they are planned to be moved to Chicago in next few months. They belong to two different time zones and I have to do the analysis of the difference aspects that would need to be taken care with respect to Code (C#) and as well as the other configuration stuffs"

My first take is to search the code and find out what are all the web pages/fields that uses the DateTime type in C#.

I'm not sure what to do next in this regard.

Can you please guide me as to what are all the aspects that to be addressed with respect to this scenario?

Your help is highly appreciated and Thanks in Advance for your help.

Thanks,
Bryan.

Posted 16-Jun-13 20:08pm

Balaji K Bryan

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tumbledDown2earth 17-Jun-13 2:16am

What is the timezone of your database? Is it the same as server? how do you insert time in the database (server specific / database specific) ?

Balaji K Bryan 17-Jun-13 2:28am

AFAIK, The Web Server and the DB Server are currently located under the same time zone and also they both would be moved to new Chicago TimeZone. We insert the time through C# code and hence I believe the date times are inserted from the time of the Web Server.

Should you need any further info, please let me know.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 17-Jun-13 2:39am

It does not matter; please see my answer.
—SA

tumbledDown2earth 17-Jun-13 2:32am

When your server moves, the first thing would be to set existing datatime values in the database to the new timezone.

Balaji K Bryan 17-Jun-13 2:42am

Okay, thanks. Is there a database function that would help me doing that? Apart from updating the date time values in database to new date time zone, is there anything with respect to C# code, that I need to take care of?

An Article from MSDN, Converting Times Between Time Zones (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397769.aspx)talks about making code changes to adjust with the new time zone. Is this relevant in my scenario?

Please advice.

tumbledDown2earth 17-Jun-13 2:35am

More depends on how your applcation has maintained timezone of the clients. if every account has a timezone setting and you convert datetimes from user to server timezones before insert and reverse while get, then you could think of redesigning that part

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-16T20:39:00

Solution 1

I think the best approach is to always work in Coordinated Universal Time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC[^].

This way, any concerns of the server-side time will be eliminated, so, for example, you can freely relocate any of your servers having no problem with this part of functionality. The local time should appear only on client sides, not matter where they are. Please see:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.datetime.utcnow.aspx[^],
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.datetime.tolocaltime.aspx[^].

—SA

Posted 16-Jun-13 20:39pm

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov

Updated 17-Jun-13 4:55am

v2

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tumbledDown2earth 17-Jun-13 3:06am

Agreed ... However, I see most legacy or semi legacy applications dont use this idea ... Makes me ponder of the near history of SW development (may be moving a server was never foreseen) :) --my5

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 17-Jun-13 10:55am

OK, but we are not talking about legacy applications. Those "legacy applications" have tons of stupidities, so why even discussing them?
Not only moving the server was foreseen, but even the advent of times beyond 2000 wasn't. :-)

Thank you.
—SA

tumbledDown2earth 18-Jun-13 0:06am

why doesn't cp have a tweet button? I would have re-tweeted this :D

Handling Time Differences between two different Time Zone in C#

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