Rails - Apr 2008 - timed events across time zones

I have an application design question to ask.

Say you have a server running in the Pacific time zone, and your app
allows users to schedule emails to be sent to them based on their local
time zone.  So for instance, an e-mail schedule to be sent at 6 PM
Eastern time would have to run on the server at 3 PM it''s time, and if
a
user in central scheduled for the same time relative to them their task
would also run at 3 PM pacific.

My approach to the problem was to have a task running every hour that
checks for scheduled events in it''s time zone and then just iterates
across the other time zones, collecting events and then e-mailing.  This
seems like a pretty straight forward way to do it, but I was wondering
if anyone can recommend a more optimal approach.

Thanks,

Binh
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On 19 Apr 2008, at 10:33, Binh Ly wrote:
>
> I have an application design question to ask.
>
> Say you have a server running in the Pacific time zone, and your app
> allows users to schedule emails to be sent to them based on their  
> local
> time zone.  So for instance, an e-mail schedule to be sent at 6 PM
> Eastern time would have to run on the server at 3 PM it''s time,
and
> if a
> user in central scheduled for the same time relative to them their  
> task
> would also run at 3 PM pacific.
>
> My approach to the problem was to have a task running every hour that
> checks for scheduled events in it''s time zone and then just
iterates
> across the other time zones, collecting events and then e-mailing.   
> This
> seems like a pretty straight forward way to do it, but I was wondering
> if anyone can recommend a more optimal approach.
Have everything in the database be utc. Only your ui bothers with  
timezones, nothing else needs to know about them.

Fred