Comment by drysart
2 days ago
Depends what you're actually storing. There are plenty of cases where the timezone is not metadata; it defines how the datetime should be interpreted.
For example: your local mom and pop corner store's daily opening and closing times. Storing those in UTC is not correct because mom and pop don't open and close their store based on UTC time. They open and close it based on the local time zone.
You conflate different concepts here. The actual moment of opening and closing can be stored in UTC, because it's proper time. Scheduling algorithm is an algorithm, not time. You can use DSL similar to time to code this algorithm, but being DSL it can go only so far to implement it.
Storing them in UTC is valid here also, but their IANA time zone string should also be stored ‘somewhere’.