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Dealing with Time Zones in SQL Server

Nate Johnson hates time zones:

To start with, the transactional data is in PST/PDT — i.e. Pacific Time with DST fluctuation. Yes, it’s horrible. No, I don’t know what happens to events or jobs at 2am on the “Fall Back” date, or between 2am and 3am on the “Spring Forward” date. No, I can’t change it right now. Stop whining.

Now, I have offices in Paris France, Hong Kong, and Beijing China. These are 3 different “time zones”, but only 2 different offsets — China and Hong Kong are in the same bucket, namely, UTC +08:00. More on that later.

Dates and currencies are seemingly two of the simplest things we deal with, but two of the most complex sets of data types.