title: Postgres timestamp and time zone for raw UTC values
body: <p>I'm hesitant to revisit this overly discussed topic, but I created a set of tables to store data and many of the tables included a field named &quot;createdate&quot; designated as &quot;timestamp without time zone&quot;.  The date/time values fed to these by the code base are always in UTC.  It is intended that the UI will be able to control how the data is presented to the user, so some setting would dictate to convert to time zone in the UI.</p>
  <p>Some of these timestamps will be for reports, so to display info for the end user.  Other times, the values will be used to determine nightly jobs run against the data.</p>
  <p>This is a typical is a multi-tenant cloud hosted system with clients across different time zones.
  The server <em>should</em> never be moved, although I suppose changing hosting zones is a very remote possibility.
  It was written on the .net platform.  Not using noda time, just the built in DateTime stuff (for now).</p>
  <p>The docs are pretty clear how the timestamp with time zone stores the info:
  <a href="https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/datatype-datetime.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/datatype-datetime.html</a></p>
  <p>This answer also has good background on the difference in the two main timestamp data types:
  <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/14616640/1905693">https://stackoverflow.com/a/14616640/1905693</a></p>
  <p>This answer also has some good info, but is Java-oriented:
  <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6627289/what-is-the-most-recommended-way-to-store-time-in-postgresql-using-java/6627999#6627999">What is the most recommended way to store time in PostgreSQL using Java?</a></p>
  <p>And Josh Berkus has a dated article that was helpful:
  <a href="https://it.toolbox.com/blogs/josh-berkus/zone-of-misunderstanding-092811" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://it.toolbox.com/blogs/josh-berkus/zone-of-misunderstanding-092811</a></p>
  <p>It seems most of these recommend the timestamp with time zone, but in my case, is timestamp without time zone appropriate?</p>
  <p>If I did want to rely on pg to do the conversion, would the AT TIME ZONE clause be ok?</p>
  <p>From an overall system architecture, is relying on the UI to change presentation a common and reasonable approach? (yeah, this one may be too opinion-flavored for SO's format)</p>