Should dateTime elements include time zone information in SOAP messages?

Question

I've been searching for a definitive answer to this, and the XML schema data types document seems to suggest that timezones are accepted, yet I found at least one implementation which does not properly convert time zones ( NUSOAP ).

To make sure that the problem is not at my end, I'd like to know if a format such as 2009-11-05T11:53:22+02:00 is indeed valid and should be parsed with timezone information, i.e. as 2009-11-05T13:53:22.

Answer 1

You converted the timezone incorrectly.

2009-11-05T11:53:22+02:00

is equivalent to

2009-11-05T09:53:22Z

Is that what NUSOAP did?

Answer 2

Given the following sentences from the w3c schema documentation:

"Local" or untimezoned times are presumed to be the time in the timezone of some unspecified locality as prescribed by the appropriate legal authority;

and

When a timezone is added to a UTC dateTime, the result is the date and time "in that timezone".

it does not sound like there is a definitive answer to this. I would assume that it is the usual ambiguity: Both versions are principally valid, and the question of what version to use depends on the configuration/behavior/expectations of the system one is interfacing with.

And even if there where a definitive answer, I would definitely not rely on it, but rather expect that every other web service and library had its own way of dealing with this :/