How does one deal with multiple TimeZones in applications that store dates and times?

Question

I realize this is a bit subjective, but I\'m hoping to pick everyones brain here on how they deal with multiple timezones? There are a variety of similar questions here and

Answer 1

+1 for @kubal5003.

Display of dates and times is always complicated by culture and time zone, so its always best to use the layer closest to the user (e.g. the browser or local application) to do this. It also moves some of the load from the database to the user's machine.

There is an exception for server-generated reports though. So I store the time zone name/ID (occasionally just the offset/bias) to find the start of day. This may be system-wide or on a per client/brand basis.

For web applications I usually detect a user's default time zone via geolocation (this is rarely wrong since geo data is quite accurate now).