UK Government Data Standards Catalogue

Metadata Value
Data Element

Date and Time
Is Part Of
Temporal
Has Parts  
Version 1.0 
Status Release 
Previous Versions  
Later Versions  
Date Agreed 23 November 2004

Back to table of contents

Name

Date and Time
Description The combined date and time of an event.
Business Format YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD (eg 1997-07-16T19:20:30+01:00)
Element Type Data Type
XML Schema
Validations
1. Values less than 10 in the day, month or year elements, should be entered with a zero in the first position.
2. Days must not be greater than 30 in April, June, September and November.
3. Days must not be greater than 28 in February except when 29 is allowed for a leap year.
Values
YYYY = four-digit year
MM = two-digit month (01=January, etc.)
DD = two-digit day of month (01 through 31)
hh = two digits of hour (00 through 23) (am/pm NOT allowed)
mm = two digits of minute (00 through 59)
ss = two digits of second (00 through 59)
TZD = time zone designator (+hh:mm or -hh:mm)
DefaultValue
Owner W3C
Based On W3C Date and Time Formats, 15 September 1997.
Verification
Comments
  • Times are expressed in local time, together with a time zone offset in hours and minutes. A time zone offset of "+hh:mm" indicates that the date/time uses a local time zone which is "hh" hours and "mm" minutes ahead of UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). A time zone offset of "-hh:mm" indicates that the date/time uses a local time zone which is "hh" hours and "mm" minutes behind UTC. For further details see http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime
  • Use xs:dateTime for XML Schemas.