[CF-metadata] time as ISO strings

From: Steve Hankin <Steven.C.Hankin>
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2010 11:44:20 -0400

On 10/22/2010 5:01 PM, Jeff deLaBeaujardiere wrote:
> Hello-
>
> I don't think I have any standing to vote on CF matters, but I just
> wanted to say that I quite agree with Steve Hankin's viewpoint. I
> personally like ISO8601 date/time strings for text display, but agree
> that under-the-hood encodings such as CF "days since T" or Unix
> "seconds since the Epoch" are ideal.

Hi Jeff,

Everybody has standing on CF discussions. Thanks for your contributions
here. (Especially since you agreed with me! ;-) ) Formal votes are
supposed to occur only in cases of deadlock -- and very rarely happen.

     - Steve

>
> When CF says "days since T" I feel that "T" should be expressed in
> ISO8601 (it often is; I don't know if that's a requirement).
>
> Regarding the precision or accuracy of time, perhaps you already know
> that ISO8601 provides a means of expressing a time interval. This
> could be the syntax used to express temporal uncertainty in metadata.
> The syntax is
>
> PyYmMdDThHmMsS
>
> where:
> P stands for 'period';
> T separates date from time components (if any);
> Y, M, D, H, M, S are suffixes meaning Years, Months, &c
> (the second M(inutes) can only occur after T so it is
> distinguishable from M[onths]);
> y, m, d, h, m, are integers;
> s is integer or real;
> unneeded components can be omitted.
>
> Example: P7DT6H30M means an interval of 7 days, 6 hours, 30 minutes.
>
> -Jeff DLB
>
>
> Steve Hankin wrote:
>> Since this email thread already contains an element of informal
>> voting I'll cast my ballot: CF is a better standard *WITHOUT
>> *admitting ISO date strings as an encoding for time coordinates.
>> [...]
>> None of this is a comment on the utility of ISO date/time strings as
>> metadata. There are appropriate uses of ISO date/time strings in CF
>> as non-coordinate variables and attributes. The NO vote is in regard
>> to their use as CF coordinates.
>
>
>
Received on Sat Oct 23 2010 - 09:44:20 BST