[UR-WG] Comment on duration format for WallDuration and CpuDuration

[Bart Heupers]

Hello,

I would like to comment on the proposed format for the WallDuration and CpuDuration properties in the Usage Record - Format Recommandation.

"The lexical representation for duration is the [ISO 8601] extended format PnYn MnDTnH nMnS, where nY represents the number of years, nM the number of months, nD the number of days, 'T' is the date/time separator, nH the number of hours, nM the number of minutes and nS the number of seconds. The number of seconds can include up to 6 decimal digits."

If you want to convert this into seconds, or add this kind of duration to a grand total it is unclear how long a month is or a year. Is a month 30 ,31 or 28 days ? And a year is that 365 or 366 days? 

The use of years and months in this representation only give rise to needless uncertainties. 

Therefore I think it is better to use as duration format the number of seconds, with six decimal digits, or of you still want to use the ISO8601 standard, use it with the restriction that years and months will never be used. In that case it is always possible to convert it unambiguously to seconds. 


Bart Heupers, HPC Advisor
SARA,  Kruislaan 415, 1098 SJ Amsterdam