[UR-WG] Comment on duration format for WallDuration andCpuDuration

[Carl Wright]

Folks:

I'm a normally quiet participant in your efforts. I support the idea of limiting duration units of measure to something that is translatable between your units of measure. To rephrase, measuring in hours, minutes or seconds is something I value from my many years of experience in rating (charging) and billing.

I suggest you avoid days, months, and years. Days aren't always 24 hours long because of the many forms of daylight savings. Perhaps you may avoid DST, but I'd still urge you to avoid the use of days. Months and years have similar problems with varying size.

Having said that, I can think of times when days, months and years are used in billing. In this context billing refers to the whole charges for a period of usage (day, month, ...). Rating (charging) refers to the charge for a specific event of usage/service. The situations that are day-friendly are usually in situations where you have memberships, rights, or other relationships. These come with increasing complications in the calculation of charges. You then have to have pro-ration algorithms when you have mid-period start and stops of these relationships. Just look at what happens with your wireless bills.

If you expect that you are charging for relatively short durations, make your life much easier by using hours, minutes and seconds.

Warmest Regards,

Carl A. Wright
Service Level Corporation
+1 734-827-2000 ext. 219 (voice)
+1 734-827-2200 (fax)
http://www.servicelevel.net/ 



-----Original Message-----
From: ur-wg-bounces at ogf.org [mailto:ur-wg-bounces at ogf.org] On Behalf Of Laura F McGinnis
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 2:26 PM
To: 'Mailing List for UR-WG'
Subject: Re: [UR-WG] Comment on duration format for WallDuration andCpuDuration

Comments from the rest of the group? Should we put some sort of
sanity-checking limit on durations so that they make sense? If so, how
should it be phrased & specified in the XML?

Thx
LM
 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Laura F. McGinnis, Project Coordinator
Data & Information Resource Services
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center                      email: lfm at psc.edu
300 South Craig St, #313                             phone: 412-268-5642
Pittsburgh, PA  15213                                  fax: 412-268-5832
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ur-wg-bounces at ogf.org [mailto:ur-wg-bounces at ogf.org] On 
> Behalf Of Bart Heupers
> Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 9:29 AM
> To: ur-wg at ogf.org
> Subject: [UR-WG] Comment on duration format for WallDuration 
> and CpuDuration
> 
> 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 
> --
>   ur-wg mailing list
>   ur-wg at ogf.org
>   http://www.ogf.org/mailman/listinfo/ur-wg
> 

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