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Subject: timezones and UTC
I've had my name next to a task to post a clarification on this point for a while now. Sorry it's taken so long. The issue, as I recall, is whether all time values in a Request must be in UTC (we've already agreed that policies may use any representation, and do not need o specify timezones). As I see it, there are two problems with constraining the requests. The first is fairly straight-forward. In XACML 2.0, we do not allow comparison of times with timezones and times without timezones. This is the right behavior, as I explained in my original email. If we require all incoming times to b qualified with a timezone and be normalized, this will make it impossible to use the current equality and comparison functions with time values that have no explicit timezone (a usecase we agreed is important). They will still be useful in the time-in-range function, but not elsewhere. The second problem is more subtle. Dates actually have the option to specify timzones, we just don't usually use them. If we require UTC normalization, then we must do so for dates as well, which will cause other failures in our current comparison system, unless all policies explicitly provide timezones. Is that what we really want? That will look very strange to most people. So, in short, I strongly reccomend that we do not require all times to be in UTC or explicitly tagged with a timezone. I think it's fine if we add a non-normative section that explains some of these issues, and even explain why it's typically a good idea to use timezones in all values, but requiring this is a mistake. seth
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