Re: (ITS#6247)

[hyc@symas.com]

daniel@pluta.biz wrote:
> Michael Ströder schrieb:
>> daniel@pluta.biz wrote:
>>> Even with the above described limited scope there seem to be plenty of
>>> open questions before thinking about "office-hours" and so on. Just two
>>> examples regarding the current implementation of now:
>>> - The server's timezone vs. the client's timezone (that's more or less
>>> obvious - in my opinion it's sufficient to store UTC times).

Yes, time is always stored in UTC in the server.

>>> - Replication of "now" attributes' values between slapds that are
>>> located in different timezones and client's that communicate with these
>>> server's...

>> IMHO the client has to convert all user input to GMT and convert all server
>> results to local timezone for presentation to the user. The server internally
>> processes everything as GMT. Maybe I got you wrong though. Other server
>> implementations do it this way when checking logon hours.

> The server internally compares the (once set) attributes' values against
> its current time (whether locale or utc, does not really matter here
> essentially it's always used the same - utc or local time) but the
> server does not know (IMHO it cannot reliably determine) from which
> timezone a client currently is connecting. Imagine a business trip to
> Japan (GMT+10) login would not work during the original specified
> (European) office hours, even when asking a local replica server in Japan...

Right. Which is a good argument against centralized enforcement of general 
logon hours, since only the client knows what timezone is relevant.

Of course, a company with offices in many timezones, and standardized working 
policies, might use such a mechanism to control the electronic door locks in 
all of their buildings. In that case it would make sense for the client 
software to treat the in-directory times as zoneless, or localtime...

But I agree, a discussion of how to manipulate timezone information is outside 
the scope of this ITS.
-- 
   -- Howard Chu
   CTO, Symas Corp.           http://www.symas.com
   Director, Highland Sun     http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
   Chief Architect, OpenLDAP  http://www.openldap.org/project/