# Date/times in dADL
**URL:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/date-times-in-dadl/14544
**Category:** Reference Implementation: Java (archive)
**Created:** [26 June 2006 22:12 UTC](https://discourse.openehr.org/t/date-times-in-dadl/14544 "2006-06-26T22:12:28Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@thomas.beale](https://discourse.openehr.org/u/thomas.beale)
#### Post date: [26 June 2006 22:12 UTC](https://discourse.openehr.org/t/date-times-in-dadl/14544/1 "2006-06-26T22:12:28Z")
Dear all,
I have just noticed that in the dADL part of the ADL spec it says that
partial date/times are expressed in a form using "??" characters rather
than the standard ISO8601 format, which is to simply leave out missing
parts. E.g. april 1954 is 1954-04 in ISO8601, but the dADL spec
currently says it should be 1954-04-??. While I wish the ISO8601
standard was like this, it is not, and in fact in our Eiffel parser, we
have implemented the standard. We can't handle just a year or just an
hour, since these get confused with integers (which is the original
reason for making dADL deviate from ISO8601). But realistically, will
there be many instances where only a year or only an hour is needed
(there might be - I don't really know..... - Sam - any comments?).
Rong, what did you implement in the Java parser?
- thomas
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### Author:  [@system](https://discourse.openehr.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [27 June 2006 06:51 UTC](https://discourse.openehr.org/t/date-times-in-dadl/14544/2 "2006-06-27T06:51:28Z")
> reason for making dADL deviate from ISO8601). But realistically, will
> there be many instances where only a year or only an hour is needed
> (there might be - I don't really know..... - Sam - any comments?).
I would say, for research purposes, when only the year of birth is needed to
know
Bert
---
### Author:  [@rong.chen](https://discourse.openehr.org/u/rong.chen)
#### Post date: [27 June 2006 08:35 UTC](https://discourse.openehr.org/t/date-times-in-dadl/14544/3 "2006-06-27T08:35:00Z")
Thomas Beale wrote:
> Dear all,
> I have just noticed that in the dADL part of the ADL spec it says that
> partial date/times are expressed in a form using "??" characters rather
> than the standard ISO8601 format, which is to simply leave out missing
> parts. E.g. april 1954 is 1954-04 in ISO8601, but the dADL spec
> currently says it should be 1954-04-??. While I wish the ISO8601
> standard was like this, it is not, and in fact in our Eiffel parser, we
> have implemented the standard. We can't handle just a year or just an
> hour, since these get confused with integers (which is the original
> reason for making dADL deviate from ISO8601). But realistically, will
> there be many instances where only a year or only an hour is needed
> (there might be - I don't really know..... - Sam - any comments?).
>
> Rong, what did you implement in the Java parser?
>
According to the ADL spec I think. See examples from test adl file.
date\_attr1 matches {yyyy-mm-dd}
date\_attr2 matches {yyyy-??-??}
date\_attr3 matches {yyyy-mm-??}
date\_attr4 matches {yyyy-??-XX}