"Rainer Mager" <rmager@vgkk.com> writes:
> The Postgres docs mention the the precision/range of timestamp with and
> withount a timezone is different.
Where are you reading that, exactly? Since there isn't any difference
between "timestamp with and without a timezone", that can't possibly be
what was meant --- so we need to fix/clarify the documentation.
Please tell us where.
> What happens is that when a timestamp is written to the database, if the
> timestamp is earlier than 1901 (I don't know the exact cutoff date), the the
> time is munged at some point.
Timezone handling in PG is dependent on the underlying OS' timezone
database, which doesn't go back further than 1901 in any Unix that
I've heard of. You should realize of course that the very notion of
timezone was only standardized in the 1800s, so attaching a timezone
to dates much older than that would be a dubious practice anyway...
regards, tom lane