tz SOAP service?

Paul Eggert eggert at CS.UCLA.EDU
Fri Feb 24 18:27:47 UTC 2006


> From: e2 [mailto:e2 at sympatico.ca]
> Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 11:22 AM
>
> I've looked and cannot find a web service (e.g. SOAP) for providing
> local time conversion using Arthur Olsen's up-to-date timezone/daylight
> savings data.

I don't know of anything specific to SOAP, no.

For at least five years the XML guys have attempted to redo the iCal
format in XML, which sort of sounds like what you're interested in.  See
<ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/internet-drafts/draft-royer-calsch-xcal-03.txt>
for their latest attempt.  So far, those attempts have not succeeded:
the calendaring guys continue to prefer straight iCal.

We tz maintainers have stuck with Arthur David Olson's circa-1986 text
format, under the "why fix what ain't broken?" theory.  If all the
iCal/SOAP/XML/whatever guys got their act together and defined a
common format that in practice worked better than the traditional one,
I'd be all ears.  So far, though, that hasn't happened.  I have asked
for better-than-Olson-format features (e.g., enough primitives to
support standard time in the Netherlands from 1835 to 1937), but
without success; this is not a good sign.

You might want to be aware of the Calendar Access Protocal (CAP)
described in Internet RFC 4323 <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4324.txt>
(December 2005).  It describes a protocol whereby a client can get
up-to-date data in VTIMEZONE format.  This protocol is still
experimental, but its authors expect it to evolve into something
that's actually supported by vendors.

My guess is that they're aiming to drop support for time zone data via
CAP, substituting FTP to acquire time zone data in iCal format.  See
<ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/internet-drafts/draft-royer-timezone-registry-03.txt>.
I don't know how well that's progressing, though.



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