The datetime values displayed in the Data360 Analyze Data Viewer are always displayed in the timezone of the server hosting the Data360 Analyze application.
In the example below:
All the datetime values use the same 'base' value 2024-10-27 12:00:00
The Server hosting the Data360 Application is hosted in the US/Pacific timezone which is currently observing PDT (i.e. UTC-7).
The 1st column in the Data Viewer displays a unicode string type field that contains a string which represents a test datetime (12:00 on Oct 27, 2024)
The 2nd column shows a datetime field. The datetime object was created as a naiive datetime with no time zone info. The value shown in the field indicates the datetime value is being displayed in the current server time (-0700) and, as the value has no time zone info, the time element is 12:00 (it is assumed to be local time).
The 3rd column displays a datetime value that was constructed with a timezone of UTC. The time element of the actual datetime object (12:00) is displayed relative to the server's time zone - as "05:00" with the timezone information showing it is relative to PDT (-0700).
The 4th column displays a datetime value that has been localized using pytz to 'US/Eastern' which is currently observing EDT (UTC-4). The value in the column is displayed relative to the server timezone. So the value is also "05:00" relative to the server's timezone of PDT (-0700). There is no indication in the Data Viewer that the underlying datetime value was created relative to the US/Eastern timezone.
The 5th column displays the UTC-localized datetime value as a formatted string and shows the timezone is indeed UTC (+0000)
The 6th column displays the US/Eastern-datetime value as a formatted string and shows the time element is "08:00" and the timezone is EDT(-0400).
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Adrian Williams
Precisely Software Inc.
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-03-2024 13:07
From: Edward Bodie
Subject: Seemingly Unable to Change Timezone Metadata of D360's datetimes
Good Afternoon all!
We have a peculiar observation that we're wondering if other folks in the userbase have encountered and if they've solutioned it. Whenever we successfully change the timezone information attached to a datetime away from the normal server TZ that is applied by default (via the methods available in pytz and datetime modules in python) it appears that D360 Analyze is immediately reapplying the server timezone metadata. Example, in the below screenshot, "Metric Date"'s TZ component has already been converted to UTC in python in a transform.. yet looking at the output pin we still see the -0500 indicating that the TZ information is somehow still remaining as US Eastern. This causes issues when using the Analyze Native Output tableau node, the resultant hyper file that it creates sees the TZ is US Eastern and converts it to the equivalent UTC time which corrupts the true time.. Since the Analyze output tableau node seemingly has not parameters to control this behavior, the fix is to update the TZ metadata to UTC before data goes into the output tableau node, however as outlined when we do this in python in a transform node, analyze seemingly ignores it and continues to treat the datetime as having a US/Eastern TZ component. Thoughts?
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Edward Bodie
Lead Developer
Consolidated Communications Enterprise Services, Inc.
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