Technical Summary
This document defines an extension to the timestamp format defined in
RFC3339 for representing additional information including a time
zone.
It updates RFC3339 in the specific interpretation of the local offset
Z, which is no longer understood to "imply that UTC is the preferred
reference point for the specified time"; see Section 2.
Working Group Summary
The WG consensus was broad. SEDATE is not the biggest WG, but there were enough
active participants during its development that agreed the I-D was ready to
proceed down the road to satisfy both chairs. Several of the participants are
implementers. Additionally, some of the WG participants also participate in
other standards bodies where this work is considered.
Only a single contentious issue emerged. We found an interoperability problem
(a special interpretation of what -0000 means) with the way that RFC 3339
handles timestamps that do not want to provide a hint about time zone offsets.
This issue was resolved through booth discussions on the mailing list and at
IETF 114 and IETF 115, and resolved in this document updating 3339.
Document Quality
Several participants in SEDATE have indicated that they will be implementing
the changes in this draft. Those implementations are both in commercial
software, open source software and changes to libraries that manage
date/timestamps.
draft-ietf-sedate-datetime-extended is also related to work going on in TICTOC,
CBOR and CALEXT. Some of the discussions in SEDATE have been cross-posted into
those groups and many active participants who agreed to consensus in SEDATE are
also active participants in TICTOC, CBOR and CALEXT.
Personnel
The Document Shepherd for this document is Mark McFadden. The
Responsible Area Director is Francesca Palombini.