[VOTE] restructure date-time value descriptions

[Christopher Jones]

Approve.  

In catching up with the subject, I'd have to agree that in theory 
dateTimes (as timestamps) are ordinal and fall on a temporal coordinate 
system, whereas a duration of say 20 seconds is interval.

Thanks for all of in depth discussion.  It's a lot to wade through.

Chris

Matt Jones wrote:

> After our long discussions about date-time values, and Tim's excellent 
> treatises on that subject and units, I think we are coalescing on the 
> idea that date-time values are most appropriately modeled as ordinal 
> values (the deeper underlying issues with measurementScale 
> notwithstanding).  Date-time values are ordered, but we seem to agree 
> that one cannot do arithmetic calculations on them without parsing 
> them and converting them to an interval scale such as "seconds since 
> 1970".
>
> I have modified the eml-attribute.xsd file (yes, again!) to reflect 
> this emerging concensus.  You can see it in cvs at:
>
> http://cvs.ecoinformatics.org/cvs/cvsweb.cgi/~checkout~/eml/eml-attribute.xsd?rev=1.93&content-type=text/plain
>
> Using this new schema, a date-time attribute is described in eml like 
> this (taken from the eml-sample.xml file):
>
>       <attribute id="att.2">
>         <attributeName>year</attributeName>
>         <attributeLabel>year</attributeLabel>
>         <attributeDefinition>The year the data was collected
>         </attributeDefinition>
>         <storageType>gYear</storageType>
>         <measurementScale>
>           <ordinal>
>             <dateTimeDomain id="dd.2">
>               <formatString>YYYY</formatString>
>               <minimum>1944</minimum>
>             </dateTimeDomain>
>           </ordinal>
>         </measurementScale>
>       </attribute>
>
> I would like to ask for a vote to determine this issue once and for 
> all so we can release EML, especially as we were scheduled to release 
> the final version of EML tomorrow!  So, here it is:
>
> VOTE: The final release of EML should include the changes to 
> representation of date-time values that were made in revision 1.93 of 
> the eml-attribute.xsd file.  This includes moving date-time value 
> descriptions to the ordinal measurementScale, and moving the format 
> string into the DateTimeDomain description.
>
> You should vote one of the following before the end of business 
> Wednesday:
>    Approve: I understand and agree with the date-time change proposal
>    Neutral: I am neutral, or don't have a solution to propose
> Disapprove: I block this from occurring, and have a solution to propose
>
> If you vote Neutral or Disapprove, it would be great to get comments 
> from you as to why (e.g., if you vote neutral just because you haven't 
> been following the discussion, it would be good to know that), and 
> proposed alternatives.
>
> Project member      Vote
> ---------------     ---------
> Tim Bergsma
> Chad Berkley
> David Blankman
> Matthew Brooke
> James Brunt
> Scott Chapal
> Corinna Gries
> Daniel Higgins
> Matthew Jones       approve
> Chris Jones
> Peter McCartney
> Ken Ramsey
> Mark Schildhauer
>
> Thanks,
> Matt
>