[protege-discussion] Locale dependend timestamp error

[Ulf Licht]

Hello,

when using Protege in client/server mode with database backend I ran into 
an exception when trying to read changes on one client made from another 
client. It seems to be a problem when clients are run with different Java 
locales.

        SEVERE: Exception caught parsing the changes ontology - it is 
probably corrupted
        java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "03/02/2010 11:55:59 
MEZ" -- DefaultTimestamp.getDateParsed()

The timezone component "zzz" of the SimpleDateFormat pattern "MM/dd/yyyy 
HH:mm:ss zzz", which is used in class 
"edu.stanford.bmir.protegex.chao.ontologycomp.api.impl.DefaultTimestamp" 
to format and parse timestamps, is locale dependent. Since no locale is 
given when creating the "DATE_FORMAT" SimpleDateFormat instance the 
default locale of the client will be used. When different clients with 
different locale settings execute changes the timestamps will be written 
into the database with the client locale dependend timezone format, which 
results in a ParseException when reading it from the other client.

The default locale should only be used in the UI when displaying time 
values to the user since then it will correctly reflect the client 
settings. When storing information on a server a fixed locale or locale 
independent representation should be used.

What do others think? Can a Bugzilla bug be opened for this?

Regards,

Ulf Licht
Integration Architect
Enterprise Architecture Management



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