calendar related events scenarii

All,

OK, I now know a lot more about date calculations, various religious and 
cultural holidays, and both the Julian and Gregorian dates for the 
Battle of Borodino.

I repeated some information in the scenarios - I wasn't sure if we could 
expect the reader to read through everything at once.  I can edit it 
down if we think it's a safe assumption.

Andrea

Scenario I-0?? Calendar-related events

A Web service is set up to calculate a calendar date and send it back to 
the requester.  The date is calendar-related but is not associated with 
a particular locale or timezone.  The service may need to take in 
information such as the calendar type, year, and related descriptive 
information.

Scenario A:  A service calculates the date for Easter, Passover, or 
Ramadan for any given year in a specified calendar type.  All these 
holidays are strictly calendar related; they are calculated based on 
certain calendar and lunar events, as well as historical tables.  The 
SOAP request would contain a holiday, a year, and a parameter indicating 
the calendar type, e.g. "Gregorian".  In addition, some other data may 
be required, such as for Easter there may be a parameter specifying 
"Orthodox" or "Western".  The Web service would in turn calculate the 
appropriate date and send a message back to the requester with the 
calculated date.  It may seem as though the calendar type is a part of 
the locale information, but locale information is typically associated 
with the end user, and there's far more information in a locale than is 
needed. In this case, the calendar type is irrelevant to the locale, 
since the requester may be looking for information unrelated to user 
preferences or system settings.

Scenario B:  A service calculates historical dates in different parts of 
the world and returns an equivalent Gregorian calendar date to the 
requester.  The SOAP request would contain a date and its country of 
origin.  For example, a request might have the date 1812/08/26 and the 
origin "Russia".  Russia was not using the Gregorian calendar at that 
time, so that date is not equivalent to the same date in places such as 
England or Germany.  While this may look locale-related due to the 
country of origin, it should not be treated as such.  Locales are 
typically associated with the end user, not with a piece of data.  A 
locale contains far more information than is relevant to this 
calculation as well.

Scenario C:  A service calculates Chinese New Year for any non-Chinese 
calendar type.  The SOAP request would include a parameter with the 
calendar type, such as "Gregorian", "Hebrew", or "Japanese Imperial". 
It may seem as though the calendar type is a part of the locale 
information, but locale information is typically associated with the end 
user, and there's far more information in a locale than is needed. In 
this case, the calendar type is irrelevant to the locale, since the 
requester may be looking for information unrelated to user preferences 
or system settings.

Received on Tuesday, 4 November 2003 21:27:33 UTC