Durations and Deadlines

The details in this section are usually sufficient for expressing durations and deadlines in a BPEL process. If you need further details, see XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes Second Edition at the following Web site: http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2.

For durations:

• A positive duration begins with the letter P.

• A calendar-duration subset (for years, months, or days) is composed of integers followed by a capital Y, M, or D:

  • 14Y means 14 years.

  • 9M means 9 months.

  • 5D means 5 days.

• The calendar-duration subsets must be in sequence from the largest to smallest unit of time:

  • P2Y9M5D means 2 years, 9 months, and 5 days.

  • P9M5D means 9 months and 5 days.

  • P5D means 5 days.

  You can skip values but cannot change the order:

  • P1Y5D means 1 year and 5 days.

  • P5D1Y is not valid because years must precede days.

• A clock-duration value begins with a capital T, and each subset (for hours, minutes, or seconds) is composed of integers followed by a capital H, M, or S:

  • PT6H means 6 hours.

  • PT9M5S means 9 minutes and 5 seconds.

  • PT5.23S means 5.23 seconds.

• The clock-duration subsets must be in sequence from the largest to smallest unit of time:

  • PT2H9M5S means 2 hours, 9 minutes, and 5 seconds.

  • PT9M5S means 9 minutes and 5 seconds.

  • PT5S means 5 seconds.

  You can skip values but cannot change the order:

  • PT1H5S means 1 hour and 5 seconds.

  • PT5S1M is not valid because minutes must precede seconds.

• You can combine the date and time durations. P4Y2DT5M1S, for example, means 4 years, 2 days, 5 minutes, and 1 second.

• Durations must conform to the XSD data type xsd:duration.

For deadlines:

• You must fulfill either of two formats in full:

  • CCYY-MM-DD

  • CCYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss

• You can add an optional time zone to either format:

  • the literal Z (for Coordinated Universal Time, which is nearly identical to Greenwich Mean Time); or

  • (+ | -) hh:mm, which is an offset from Coordinated Universal Time. The offset is negative from west of the meridian to the international date line and is otherwise positive.

• Include literal hyphens and (for the second format) literal colons and the capital letter T.

• Substitute digits for the other characters:

  • CCYY stands for a four-digit year ("C" is for century).

  • MM stands for a two-digit month.

  • DD stands for a two-digit day.

  • hh stands for a two-digit hour (0–23).

  • mm stands for a two-digit minute.

  • ss stands for a two-digit second.

• 2109-02-06T09:15:03 refers to 9:15:03 AM on 6 February 2109. The time zone is unspecified.

• 2109-02-06T14:15:03-05:00 refers to 2:15:03 PM Eastern Standard Time on 6 February 2109.

• Deadlines must conform to the XSD data type xsd:date or xsd:dateTime.