mysql datetime vs timestamp

点击打开链接http://stackoverflow.com/questions/409286/should-i-use-field-datetime-or-timestamp#

In MySQL 5 and above, TIMESTAMP values are converted from the current time zone to UTC for storage, and converted back from UTC to the current time zone for retrieval. (This occurs only for the TIMESTAMP data type, and not for other types such as DATETIME.)

By default, the current time zone for each connection is the server's time. The time zone can be set on a per-connection basis, as described in MySQL Server Time Zone Support.

An important difference is that DATETIME represents a date (as found in a calendar) and a time (as can be observed on a wall clock), while TIMESTAMP represents a well defined point in time. This could be very important if your application handles time zones. How long ago was '2010-09-01 16:31:00'? It depends on what timezone you're in. For me it was just a few seconds ago, for you it may represent a time in the future. If I say 1283351460 seconds since '1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC', you know exactly what point in time I talk about