Web service time computer

[Phillip Guerra]

I've done a conversion of the tzinfo datastore to use with MS .Net
concentric apps.  One of the issues encountered is the need to expand
the info to hold discrete records for the years named for rules, and
zones.  For example, the number of rules created are over 4,500+.
Properly indexed, I don't see an issue with the number of rules.
However, I still need to test the approach with example apps and usage
cases. 

The information is a simple ascii file, similar to tzinfo, and a parsing
program could be used to create other forms of the data like xml or
database info. I would think the xml file would be useful for that
purpose or even the expanded raw file to use for whatever further
processing was required.  The need for me was to provide the info for
use by web apps which may be limited by security issues to use a host's
system information, which on MS systems has no capability for historical
reference, limited to the current year, and is known to be be less
accurate. 

Still not sure if this is the most efficient method to go about it, but
I found nothing like it in my searching for a similar solution.  Most MS
solutions are using the registry info, which has the above mentioned
issues, and therefore not optimum.

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Schauble [mailto:Paul.Schauble at ticketmaster.com] 
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 2:59 PM
To: tz at lecserver.nci.nih.gov; tz at lecserver.nci.nih.gov
Subject: RE: Web service time computer

It might be better to maintain TZDATA in xml and have a translator back
to the current format. 

    ++PLS

-----Original Message-----
From: tz-request at elsie.nci.nih.gov [mailto:tz-request at elsie.nci.nih.gov]
On Behalf Of Deborah Goldsmith
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 1:00 PM
To: tz at lecserver.nci.nih.gov
Subject: Re: Web service time computer

On Feb 23, 2006, at 8:59 AM, Andy Lipscomb wrote:
> I've actually been trying to use this data to implement time zone 
> conversion in REALbasic, and one of the steps in doing so has proven 
> to be rewriting the data files in XML. I could contribute that much to

> the efforts.
>

Actually, the ICU team is very interested in getting this data in an XML
form as well. One of the projects on my to-do list is to make a proposal
for changes to zic that would optionally emit a (stable) XML version of
the data. If someone else gets to this first I would be happy to help.

Deborah Goldsmith
Internationalization, Unicode liaison
Apple Computer, Inc.
goldsmit at apple.com