Rule Application Server Administration › Web Service Data Mapping › W3C DateTime Values

W3C DateTime Values

DateTime strings conform to the W3C schema data types: dateTime, date and time.

Data validation is case-sensitive and requires specification of uppercase alphabetic characters within these values.

DateTime values may specify one of the following formats:

• A combination of date and time values delimited by a T - example 2003-04-23T15:34:29 for April 23, 2003 3:34:29pm.
• A date value - example 2003-04-23 - defaulting to 00:00:00 for April 23, 2003.
• A time value - example 15:34:29 - defaulting to the Engine's base for 3:34:29pm.

Date components must be delimited by '-'; time components must be delimited by ':'. The value text may not include any embedded blanks.

Time values must be expressed in 24-hour (military) format.

Each component has a fixed or minimum width (requiring leading zeros as necessary):

• The Year specification must consist of at least four digits and must be greater or equal to 0001.
• The Month specification must consist of exactly two digits and must be in the range 01-12 inclusive.
• The Day specification must consist of exactly two digits and must be in the range 01-31 inclusive.
• If the Day specification is inappropriate for the Month specification, a successive Month is assumed, for example, 2003-04-31 is interpreted as 2003-05-01.
• The Hour specification must consist of exactly two digits and must be in the range 00-23 inclusive.
• The Minute specification must consist of exactly two digits and must be in the range 00-59 inclusive.
• The Second specification must consist of exactly two digits and must be in the range 00-59 inclusive.

The Second specification is optional, for example 15:02 is synonymous with 15:02:00.

A DateTime specification may optionally specify a Z suffix indicating Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). If the Z is not specified, the DateTime value refers to client-local time (CLT).

Examples

2003-04-23T15:34Z  // April 23, 2003 3:34pm GMT
2003-04-23Z        // April 23, 2003 00:00 GMT
15:34Z             // Base date, 3:34pm GMT
15:34              // Base date, 3:34pm local time

Following are the other restrictions:

• The engine supports only Common-Era (CE - also known as AD) dates. This limitation is due to current W3C uncertainty concerning representation of dates for the Before-Common Era (BCE - also known as BC) era.
• The Engine restricts these DateTime values to the range:

  >=0001-01-01T00:00:00Z .. <=292278994-08-16T07:12:55Z
  

Only a subset of the W3C specifications is supported. The following is not supported:

• Signed values for date and/or time values, for example, 2003-04-23
• Fractional-Second values, for example, 12:34:32.56
• Time-zone offsets, for example, 2003-04-23T12:34:00+03:00
• Hour values greater than 23, for example, 24:00:00 (as an optional specification for midnight)
• Second values greater than 59, for example, for leap seconds

In addition, a Z suffix is interpreted as denoting GMT rather than UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). Whereas GMT is based on astronomical observations, UTC is based on an atomic clock - and takes into account periodic leap second corrections. Practically speaking, GMT and UTC are the same.