---
title: "Storing date/time values in databases"
slug: "storing-date-time-values-in-databases"
abstract: "You should only store UTC date/time values in your databases."
---
# Storing date/time values in databases

Sitecore databases store date/time values not only as string values. There are tables that contain `datetime` columns, but they might not store information about time zone. Therefore, all dates in the databases should be treated as UTC and date/time kind should be explicitly set to UTC when reading date/time values from the database.

The following is an example of reading a date/time value from the database:

```text
DateTime startDate = reader.InnerReader.GetDateTime(13).SpecifyKind(DateTimeKind.Utc);

```