Sql-server – current_timestamp at time zone ‘UTC’ SQL Server equivalent

In postgres, timestamp with time zone can be abbreviated as timestamptz, and timestamp without time zone as timestamp. I will use the shorter type names for simplicity.

Getting the Unix timestamp from a postgres timestamptz like now() is simple, as you say, just:

select extract(epoch from now());

That's really all you need to know about getting the absolute time from anything of type timestamptz, including now().

Things only get complicated when you have a timestamp field.

When you put timestamptz data like now() into that field, it will first be converted to a particular timezone (either explicitly with at time zone or by converting to the session timezone) and the timezone information is discarded. It no longer refers to an absolute time. This is why you don't usually want to store timestamps as timestamp and would normally use timestamptz — maybe a film gets released at 6pm on a particular date in every timezone, that's the kind of use case.

If you only ever work in a single time zone you might get away with (mis)using timestamp. Conversion back to timestamptz is clever enough to cope with DST, and the timestamps are assumed, for conversion purposes, to be in the current time zone. Here's an example for GMT/BST:

select '2011-03-27 00:59:00.0+00'::timestamptz::timestamp::timestamptz
     , '2011-03-27 01:00:00.0+00'::timestamptz::timestamp::timestamptz;

/*
|timestamptz           |timestamptz           |
|:---------------------|:---------------------|
|2011-03-27 00:59:00+00|2011-03-27 02:00:00+01|
*/

_DBFiddle

But, note the following confusing behaviour:

set timezone to 0;

values(1, '1970-01-01 00:00:00+00'::timestamp::timestamptz)
    , (2, '1970-01-01 00:00:00+02'::timestamp::timestamptz);

/*
|column1|column2               |
|------:|:---------------------|
|      1|1970-01-01 00:00:00+00|
|      2|1970-01-01 00:00:00+00|
*/

_DBFiddle

This is because:

PostgreSQL never examines the content of a literal string before determining its type, and therefore will treat both […] as timestamp without time zone. To ensure that a literal is treated as timestamp with time zone, give it the correct explicit type…In a literal that has been determined to be timestamp without time zone, PostgreSQL will silently ignore any time zone indication

To go along with @ypercube's comment that CURRENT_TIMESTAMP is stored as UTC but retrieved as the current timezone, you can affect your server's timezone setting with the --default_time_zone option for retrieval. This allows your retrieval to always be in UTC.

By default, the option is 'SYSTEM' which is how your system time zone is set (which may or may not be UTC!):

mysql> SELECT @@global.time_zone, @@session.time_zone;
+--------------------+---------------------+
| @@global.time_zone | @@session.time_zone |
+--------------------+---------------------+
| SYSTEM             | SYSTEM              |
+--------------------+---------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP();
+---------------------+
| CURRENT_TIMESTAMP() |
+---------------------+
| 2012-09-25 16:28:45 |
+---------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

You can set this dynamically:

mysql> SET @@session.time_zone='+00:00';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT @@global.time_zone, @@session.time_zone;
+--------------------+---------------------+
| @@global.time_zone | @@session.time_zone |
+--------------------+---------------------+
| SYSTEM             | +00:00              |
+--------------------+---------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Or permanently in your my.cnf:

[mysqld]
**other variables**
default_time_zone='+00:00'

Restart your server, and you will see the change:

mysql> SELECT @@global.time_zone, @@session.time_zone;
+--------------------+---------------------+
| @@global.time_zone | @@session.time_zone |
+--------------------+---------------------+
| +00:00             | +00:00              |
+--------------------+---------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP();
+---------------------+
| CURRENT_TIMESTAMP() |
+---------------------+
| 2012-09-25 20:27:50 |
+---------------------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)