Back before 8.2 came out, I posted:
> Any view over the full timezone names should also include the
> corresponding data from zone.tab in the timezone library source.
I got no meaningful response to this (Tom responded with an erroneous
statement and ignored my explanation of his mistake).
Back before 8.3 came out, Naz Gassiep posted on the same subject:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2008-01/msg00217.php
and got no response at all.
He posted again:
http://archives.postgresql.org//pgsql-hackers/2008-02/msg00552.php
and got no meaningful response.
About every third month, I end up explaining on IRC to some
unfortunate user that the information he needs _is_ available, but
only by extracting zone.tab from the source and loading it up into a
table. At the VERY LEAST, can we PLEASE have the zone.tab file
INSTALLED WHERE IT BELONGS rather than simply ignored, so that even if
further requests to include the information in a system view go
unheard by -hackers, I can at least provide a pgfoundry module or
something to do the job.
To answer the inevitable responses preemptively:
1) The data in zone.tab is needed any time you want to offer a user a
sensible way of choosing his timezone; it associates timezones with
countries and provides additional detail for certain annoying edge
cases.
2) zone.tab does not include every alias name that shows up in
pg_timezone_names. IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO INCLUDE THEM.
3) zone.tab _IS_ maintained just as carefully as the rest of the data.
I don't know exactly what needs to be changed on the Windows side
(where it is arguably even _more_ important to do this), but for
everyone else, see the attached patch.
--
Andrew (irc:RhodiumToad)
