Time Zone issue on built in DateTime fields (CreateDate, UpdateDate etc...)

[OwainJ]

Which Umbraco version are you using? (Please write the exact version, example: 10.1.0)

13.2.2

Bug summary

Built in DateTime properties like CreateDate and UpdateDate, return a DateTime with incorrect TimeZone and Daylight Savings information, when using a SQL Server database, which causes UTC conversions to be incorrect.

Specifics

I ran into this issue in v13.2.2, I have some code that shows the elapsed time since a Node has been Published, by converting the UpdateDate to UTC and subtracting it's Ticks from DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks, to get the time difference in seconds.

This logic all works fine, but the CreateDate and UpdateDate that Umbraco returns, is different depending on if I run SQLite or SQL Server Express.

Discord thread on this issue: https://discord.com/channels/869656431308189746/1232004629441679391 Public mirror: https://discord-chats.umbraco.com/t/18468992/v13-weird-timezone-issue-on-sql-server-express-vs-sqlite

Steps to reproduce

Here's a .zip of a demo project which demonstrates the issue. Umbraco-13-timezone-issue.zip

As you can see here, when running this project with a SQLite database, the DateTime returned is properly set as a Daylight Savings time (as I'm in BST), and when converting to UTC it correctly minuses an hour:

But when you run the project with a SQL Server Express database, the DateTime returned is not set as Daylight Savings, and therefore does NOT minus an hour when converting to UTC, which messes up the elapsed time calculation:

According to a comment on this closed issue: https://github.com/umbraco/Umbraco-CMS/issues/7078#issuecomment-551600622

NPoco assumes that all DateTime columns are UTC unless told otherwise in the column attributes

Which i understand, we can assume that CreateDate and UpdateDate are stored as server local time (although I imagine if you load balance across time zones, this could be annoying no? Shouldn't these be DateTimeOffset?), so this must indicate that the SQLite and SQL Server database providers are doing different things when reading DateTime columns; it seems like the SQLite provider converts them to local, whilst the SQL Server provider does not?

I also changed my Windows Time Zone to Brisbane (UTC+10) and, as expected, I get the exact same issue; the CreateDate and UpdateDate properties don't convert to UTC correctly when using SQL Server. (they stay 10 hours ahead)

Expected result / actual result

No response

[github-actions[bot]]

Hi there @OwainJ!

Firstly, a big thank you for raising this issue. Every piece of feedback we receive helps us to make Umbraco better.

We really appreciate your patience while we wait for our team to have a look at this but we wanted to let you know that we see this and share with you the plan for what comes next.

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[abjerner]

Just sharing a link here, as your issue might be related to this old timer: https://github.com/umbraco/Umbraco-CMS/issues/11948

[OwainJ]

Just sharing a link here, as your issue might be related to this old timer: #11948

Cheers, it does defo seem related to that one, but my issue is with the built in DateTime fields rather than custom properties (although that issue mentions them too) :)

[Migaroez]

Hey Owain, thank you for the detailed report. I will try and replicate this asap with integration tests.

[OwainJ]

Hi @Migaroez, just checking if you had a chance to try and replicate this issue?

[OwainJ]

Hi @JasonElkin, I just want to confirm that, according to your comment here: https://github.com/umbraco/Umbraco-CMS/pull/16833#issuecomment-2299303874, the current suggested workaround for this issue is to set the server timezone to UTC?