Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This page is part of the DAS 1.53E specification

Documentation DAS timestamp convention

The following syntax is being used when specifying time stamps for DAS: 


year '-' month '-' day 'T' hour ':' minute ':' second [ '.' fraction ] [Z|±hh[:][mm]]
For example, 8:34am, 26 seconds, and 350 milliseconds on October 26th, 2000 UTC would be formatted as: 2000-10-26T08:34:26.350Z. The 'Z' at the end signifies Zulu Time(UTC).

Time Zones

The default time zone is UTC. This is indicated by adding a Z directly after the time. Other time zones are specified by their offset from UTC. If the server is e.g. in a timezone which is UTC + 1 then the above timestamp would be formatted as 2000-10-26T08:34:26.350+0100. The following time zone notations are valid: 
timeZ
time±hhmm
time±hh:mm
time±hh

Examples

Any of these are valid time stamps: 
2000-10-26T08:34:26.350Z
2000-10-26T08:34:26.350+0100
2000-10-26T08:34:26.350+01:00
2000-10-26T08:34:26.350+01
How it is used by the DAS registry:
  • The lastModified command tells, when the last time a DAS source has been registered, modified, or removed from registration.
  • The sources command provides a listing of all registered DAS sources.

This convention is based on ISO 8601 and also has been adopted from the ASCII Timestamp Format for Grid Computing.