Point in Time (TS)

Timestamps provide a means of marking a specific point in time. For example: a person's birthday, or the time a prescription dispense was recorded, etc.

High-level Timestamp Types

CHI defines four timestamp specialization types:

TS.DATE
TS.DATETIME
TS.FULLDATE
TS.FULLDATETIME

A timestamp can vary from a simple partial date (e.g. only a year) to a fraction of a second in time within a specified timezone. A timezone is given as a relative offset to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). For example, “-0800” represents the Pacific Time Zone. The Gregorian (Western) calendar is the default calendar.

Specialization Types

Below are the basic rules for using each of the timestamp specification types:

	TS.DATE	TS.DATETIME	TS.FULLDATE	TS.FULLDATETIME
Date	allows partial	allows partial	mandatory	mandatory
Time	not allowed	allows partial	not allowed	mandatory
Timezone	not allowed	mandatory (if time provided)	not allowed	mandatory
Grammar	YYYY[MM[DD]] (4-8 characters)	YYYY[MM[DD[HH[MM[SS[.SSSS]]]]]][+/-ZZZZ] (24 characters)	YYYYMMDD (8 characters)	YYYYMMDDHHMMSS[.SSSS] +/-ZZZZ (24 characters)
Example	<effectiveTime value="200508"/> August, 2005	<effectiveTime value="200508021730-0800"/> August 2, 2005, 5:30pm (Pacific Time)	<effectiveTime value="20050802"/> August 2, 2005	<effectiveTime value="20050802173021.1212-0800"/> August 2, 2005, 5:30pm and 21.1212 seconds (Pacific Time)