Re: AW: ISO 8601 anyone?? And more on Parties.

[Eduardo Gutentag <eduardo.gutentag@eng.sun.com>]

I feel obliged to clarify something: I did not say that ISO 8601
was not being endorsed by W3C -- all I said is that it is part of the XML Schema
specification, not of the XML specification, in an attempt at trying to
avoid metonymy when dealing with standards or standards-related activities.

As to the issue of the date format itself, I have to confess that most of
this discussion is leaving me puzzled by the assertions that there must be just
one format and that it's essential to get the right one at all costs.
I'm sure I'm missing something (and I'm sure a hundred voices will
rise now trying to educate me), but to my humble way of thinking XML's strength
is that transforming from one format to another is a piece of cake, particularly
if you avoid non-separated strings (e.g. 20010417) in favor of marked up entries,
in whatever order. Hm, I think I'm pushing for mark up, what a surprise.

OK - I'm now ready for the flames ;-)


"William J. Kammerer" wrote:
> 
> Andreas Schultz asked me to forward the attached e-mail to the list.
> At first I hesitated, since he doesn't agree with me.  But I changed my
> mind when I realized that would be cruel, petty and un-American.
> 
> To Andreas:
> 
> What puzzles me is why people can't post to a list from which they
> receive messages.  Perhaps you're subscribed to the CC list with a
> different e-mail account than the one you're posting from.  Check the
> headers of e-mails arriving from ebXML for "X-Rcpt-To:"
> 
> William J. Kammerer
> FORESIGHT Corp.
> 4950 Blazer Pkwy.
> Dublin, OH USA 43017-3305
> +1 614 791-1600
> 
> Visit FORESIGHT Corp. at http://www.foresightcorp.com/
> "accelerating time-to-trade"
> 
>   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Subject: AW: ISO 8601 anyone?? And more on Parties.
> Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 14:53:37 +0200
> From: Schultz.DKV@t-online.de (Andreas Schultz)
> To: "William J. Kammerer" <wkammerer@foresightcorp.com>,
>      ebXML Core <ebxml-core@lists.ebxml.org>
> 
> I also aggree with what Sharon said about the CONTENT. But - the possibility
> we have within EDIFACT allows people to write Date - information in a format
> they are used to. Limiting this to just one format, even if it may (or may
> not as Eduardo points out) be stated by W3C (who as we at least since
> Washington all know does not have the same status as UN/CEFACT EWG or ISO)
> seems to be a poor solution. I would not expect the Europeans (mostly using
> DDMMYYYY)to change the format they are used to, especially not while
> exchangig data within Europe. So, I guess the solution only can be to give
> informations about the format a date is expressed in (even if this is not
> compliant to W3C or ISO 8601 but at "least" with UN/EDIFACT).
> 
> Andreas Schultz
> 
> Dear William,
> 
> I'm not sure whether this will come via the list server. If not, could you
> please forward this for me?
> Thanks!!
> 
> > -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> > Von: William J. Kammerer [mailto:wkammerer@foresightcorp.com]
> > Gesendet am: Dienstag, 17. April 2001 01:18
> > An: ebXML Core
> > Betreff: Re: ISO 8601 anyone?? And more on Parties.
> >
> > Sharon Kadlec says "It's the CONTENT [of dates or times that's
> > important], not the format - label it correctly and we'll put it where
> > it belongs for our purposes."
> >
> > Absolutely!  It's up to the recipient to interpret the normalized
> > content - and then display the date, time or dateTime any which way he
> > wants.  Therefore, since a dateTime can always be normalized as an ISO
> > 8601 extended date-time, there's no need to send along information on
> > how to decode it.  As I noted earlier, the spreadsheet catalog has "date
> > time.format.text code" defined as "[Using] values from ISO 8601."  There
> > are no "codes" in ISO 8601.
> >
> > This isn't the same situation as with the EDIFACT C507 DATE/TIME/PERIOD
> > composite where the date and time can be transmitted over the wire as
> > DDMMYY or DDMMCCYY or CCYYMMDD or YYMMDDHHMMSS, etc. etc. With the
> > dateTime XML Schema Data Type, you have no choice:  it must be
> > CCYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss (with optional trailing -  and unambiguous - time
> > zone stuff or Z for universal time) - no 'ifs,' 'ands' or 'buts."
> >
> > Even putting aside the input format considerations, EDIFACT D.E. 2379
> > (Date or time or period format code) was used to indicate whether you
> > had a Date, a Time, a DateTime, a Period,or a duration, etc. etc. - as
> > to say: it was comingling data types. These are handled with separate
> > datatypes in XML Schema: viz. a date (e.g., 1999-05-31), a time (e.g.,
> > 13:20:00), a dateTime (e.g., 2000-03-04T23:00:00+03), or a duration
> > (e.g., P1Y2MT2H), respectively. These are conceptually separate basic
> > core components (even dateTime could be considered basic - it needn't be
> > merely a date and time aggregated together).
> >
> > William J. Kammerer
> > FORESIGHT Corp.
> > 4950 Blazer Pkwy.
> > Dublin, OH USA 43017-3305
> > +1 614 791-1600
> >
> > Visit FORESIGHT Corp. at http://www.foresightcorp.com/
> > "accelerating time-to-trade"
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------
> > To unsubscribe from this elist send a message with the single word
> > "unsubscribe" in the body to: ebxml-core-request@lists.ebxml.org
> >

-- 
Eduardo Gutentag               |         e-mail: eduardo@eng.Sun.COM
XML Technology Center          |         Phone:  (650) 786-5498
Sun Microsystems Inc.          |         fax:    (650) 786-5727