title: Dates with no time or timezone component in Java/MySQL
body: <p>I need to be able to store a date (year/month/day) with no time component. It's an abstract concept of a date, such as a birthday - I need to represent a date in the year and not a particular instant in time.</p>
  
  <p>I am using Java to parse the date from some input text, and need to store in a MySQL database. No matter what timezone the database, application, or any client is in, they should all see the same year/month/day.</p>
  
  <p>My application will run on a machine with a different system timezone from the database server, and I don't have control over either. Does anyone have an elegant solution for ensuring I store the date correctly?</p>
  
  <p>I can think of these solutions, neither of which seems very nice:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Query my MySQL connection for its timezone and parse the input date in that timezone</li>
  <li>Process the date entirely as a string yyyy-MM-dd</li>
  </ul>