Add Calendar Event Automatically?

[Richardg]

I'm just trying to sort this out right now (I'm assuming you're familiar with php/mysql).

I've been using my external events system to insert new records into the events table.
I've added a new column to the events table to hold the ID of the corresponding record in my external events table so that I can update the events table when I update my external table.
I've got the recurring events working.
I'm left with a couple of issues:
1) I'm having a little trouble with the time zone offset which I don't fully understand (I enter event dates using the Unix timestamp function in MySQL but this seems to go wrong because we have DST here at the moment and the events end up on the wrong day.
2) I do not know what the utc column is for.
I don't know if any of this helps...maybe you have got further than me.

Any input from anyone would be appreciated.