ca.infoway.messagebuilder.datatype
Interface TS

All Superinterfaces:

ANY<Date>, BareANY, NullFlavorSupport, QTY<Date>

All Known Implementing Classes:

TSImpl

public interface TS
extends QTY<Date>

HL7 datatype TS backed by a java Date.

A quantity specifying a point on the axis of natural time. A point in time is most often represented as a calendar expression.

Semantically, however, time is independent from calendars and best described by its relationship to elapsed time (measured as a physical quantity in the dimension of time). A TS plus an elapsed time yields another TS. Inversely, a TS minus another TS yields an elapsed time.

As nobody knows when time began, a TS is conceptualized as the amount of time that has elapsed from some arbitrary zero-point, called an epoch. Because there is no absolute zero-point on the time axis; natural time is a difference-scale quantity, where only differences are defined but no ratios. (For example, no TS is - absolutely speaking - "twice as late" as another TS.)

Given some arbitrary zero-point, one can express any point in time as an elapsed time measured from that offset. Such an arbitrary zero-point is called an epoch. This epoch-offset form is used as a semantic representation here, without implying that any system would have to implement TS in that way. Systems that do not need to compute distances between TSs will not need any other representation than a calendar expression literal.

Author:

Intelliware Development

Method Summary

Methods inherited from interface ca.infoway.messagebuilder.datatype.ANY

getNullFlavor, getValue, isNull, nonNull, notApplicable, other, setNullFlavor, setValue, unknown

Methods inherited from interface ca.infoway.messagebuilder.datatype.BareANY

getBareValue, getDataType, setDataType

Methods inherited from interface ca.infoway.messagebuilder.datatype.nullflavor.NullFlavorSupport

hasNullFlavor