Le jeudi 27 octobre 2005 à 20:35 +0100, Daniel Carrera a écrit : > Nicolas Mailhot wrote: > > >>Well, date formats are not going to severely hinder interoperability. > > > > You're being as naïve as Chad there. Business processes depend on > > exchanging documents containing dates in a standard format. > > No need to be offensive :) If I'm wrong just show me where I'm wrong and > I'll learn. Notice that I included the word *severely*. I haven't yet > seen dates become a severe problem, though I can certainly see how they > are a _problem_. And for that reason, I use a format that I know will be > inmediately understandable by my audience. Since my audience usually > comprises a mix of English speakers who can't agree whether to use > MM-DD-YY or DD-MM-YY, I usually pick DD-MMM-YYYY which they all get.
Actually because of daylight saving times and all the timezones that exist you need something more complete nowadays. For example YYYY-MM-DDTZD as the W3C & ISO propose (http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime) Adding timezone means people in another country will be able to convert if needed. Adding explicit timezone (time differential with UTC) means if you're in a country that does DST the day it happens you know if you're before of after the switching point. In my country for example railroad control systems were developed using local date/time reference. As a result they have to stop every single train in the country one hour every year, because this hour does not exist for the control systems and it would be dangerous to let trains move. Simple dates are ok when you don't care about precision. In a global economy where you work with people all around the world and systems are supposed to be up 24h a day every single day of the year, this simplicity is a luxury less and less people will be able to afford. (I've given one well-publicised example - I've seen others in my day job but I'm not supposed to leak them) Regards, -- Nicolas Mailhot
