MySQL Bugs: #71754: TIMESTAMP approacing End Of Lifetime :-)

Bug #71754	TIMESTAMP approacing End Of Lifetime :-)
Submitted:	17 Feb 2014 19:48	Modified:	17 Feb 2014 22:27
Reporter:	Peter Laursen (Basic Quality Contributor)	Email Updates:
Status:	Verified	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Server: Data Types	Severity:	S3 (Non-critical)
Version:		OS:	Any
Assigned to:		CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/datetime.html

"The TIMESTAMP data type is used for values that contain both date and time parts. TIMESTAMP has a range of '1970-01-01 00:00:01' UTC to '2038-01-19 03:14:07' UTC."

This limitation, I believe, is inherited from a 32 bit unix_timestamp (2^32 seconds from the OFFSET of the TIMESTAMP).  It is about time to lift this restriction (for 64 bit systems at least - and soon there will be no 32 bit systems anyway!)

How to repeat:
See above!

Suggested fix:
See above!

Besides .. with recent changes I don't think there is much idea in keeping TIMESTAMP and DATETIME as separate data types.  They now do the same (with the sole difference that DATETIME is stored in client's timezone, whileTIMESTAMP is stored in UTC).

All this should have been cleaned up IMO when DATETIMEs had added ON UPDATE functionality (in some early 5.6x release)

But I am not able to decide how this will affect Linux/Unix OS 'timeprints' and the mapping of TIMESTAMP to same as well as functions casting from one to another. No matter what: a TIMESTAMP/unix_timestamp based on a 32 bit calculation/algorithm is no less than a joke today!

Thank you for the bug report.

http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=12654 (64-bit unix timestamp is not supported in MySQL functions)
http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=24625 (from_unixtime() for 64bits system)