Paula Cadle, of DotCom Technologies, Inc., asked if there is an element
to specify time zone in the EDIFACT standard D97A.
Dear Paula:
DTM01-C50703, or Data Element 2379, has a number of Date/time/period
format qualifiers which specify that the corresponding Date/time/period
in D.E. 2380 will include a time zone. For example, Code Value 301 has
the definition "YYMMDDHHMMZZZ", where the ZZZs is the time zone. You
can find all the various code qualifiers which include time zone in
their definitions using EDISIM's Find command in the Standards Editor by
searching on "ZZZ". Other code values including time zone in D97A's
D.E. 2379 are:
302 YYMMDDHHMMSSZZZ
303 CCYYMMDDHHMMZZZ
304 CCYYMMDDHHMMSSZZZ
404 HHMMSSZZZ
503 HHMMSSZZZ-HHMMSSZZZ
There's never been any hard and fast standard for naming time zones,
though they are what you would expect, like "CET" for Central European
Time and "EST" for Eastern Standard Time. Alternatively, you could use
the ISO 8601 technique to specify time zones relative to Greenwich Mean
Time as described in the old posting to EDI-L which I've reproduced,
below.
William J. Kammerer
FORESIGHT Corp.
4950 Blazer Memorial Pkwy.
Dublin, OH USA 43017-3305
+1 614 791-1600
Visit FORESIGHT Corp. at http://www.foresightcorp.com/
"Commerce for a New World"
----- Original Message -----
From: William J. Kammerer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 1998 3:21 PM
Subject: Re: EDIfact DE 2379 question
Erlend Nagel, of DHL, wrote: "Edifact data element 2379 allows one to
specify the use of a timezone. However it fails to refer to the relevant
codelist/standard. It does specify that it is three characters, but that
could still be anything from '+04' to things like 'EST'. Does anybody
have any experience with the use of timezones (in DTM segments) willing
to share his or her experiences?"
Erlend:
The EDIFACT directory code list for D.E. 2379 (Date/time/period format
qualifier) is, of course, silent on what you're supposed to substitute
for the three character ZZZ, or time zone. I would avoid using the
alphabetic codes, such as EDT and CST, that we're used to seeing since
that requires the recipient to have complicated tables and logic for
decoding the time zones and discerning the hour difference from their
local time.
Instead, I would simply specify the time zone as "+01" or "-05" to
indicate the time relative to "Z" or Universal Time (for all practical
purposes the same as Greenwich Mean Time or GMT); so "UTC+01" would be
used in most of Europe (Central European Time?) and "UTC-05" would be
Eastern (U.S.) time. This is how time is represented in E-mail headers.
For example, examining the headers of various recent EDI-L postings, we
have:
John Gravlin sent mail at Tue, 3 Nov 1998 13:13:15 -0500. The -0500
means 5 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time, which would put John in the
Eastern time zone (same as me).
Your mail was dated Tue, 3 Nov 1998 19:03:21 +0100. This means you're
one hour ahead of GMT (somewhere on the European continent?).
Chris Johnson's missive was time-stamped with Tue, 3 Nov 1998 17:33:47
+0000; Chris is at the center of action - his time zone is GMT.
And finally, Jim Sykes is 3 hours behind me, on the U.S. West Coast
(Pacific time), because his posting was stamped: Tue, 27 Oct 1998
12:04:44 -0800
Of course, the recipient would then have to make his own adjustments for
Daylight Savings time, since UDT doesn't have a concept of "Daylight
Savings Time." And then I've wondered how the Newfoundland time
differential would be represented with the ZZZ, as it is 3 and a half
hours behind GMT.
See also: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html -
There exists no international standard that specifies
abbreviations for civil time zones like CET, EST, etc. and
sometimes the same abbreviation is even used for two very
different time zones. In addition, politicians enjoy
modifying the rules for civil time zones, especially for
daylight saving times, every few years, so the only really
reliable way of describing a local time zone is to specify
numerically the difference of local time to UTC. Better
use directly UTC as your only time zone where this is
possible and then you do not have to worry about time
zones and daylight saving time changes at all.
You can find someone's interpretation of common abbreviations for time
zones, though, at
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Alley/1100/world/timezones.htm. Or
look at the code values defined for ASC X12 D.E. 623 (Time Code), which
has two character time zone abbreviations.
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