Editorial draft available to read. Factual and language review is pending. Examples are illustrative.
Decision and method
Classify each temporal field as an instant, a date without time or a recurring local schedule. Define format, zone, precision and display rules. Do not automatically convert every value to the same representation: a delivery date and the instant of an approval have different meanings and may require different handling.
Illustrative example
Illustrative example: an order is due on November 12 according to the warehouse calendar. That date remains November 12 when viewed from another office. Approval, however, is recorded as an instant and displayed with an appropriate zone so investigators can reconstruct the sequence of actions across the connected systems.
Acceptance check
Test midnight boundaries, dates without time and clock-change periods applicable to the zones in use. Include ambiguous or nonexistent local times where relevant. Accept when source, storage and display preserve the agreed meaning and an export remains interpretable without relying on the receiving computer's unstated regional or time-zone configuration.
Key takeaways
- Before transforming a temporal value, define what it represents in the business process.