Date time string from UME-SPML interface

Question

Hi,
I am using the UME-SPML interface to manage users in SAP UME and using AS ABAP user management as the user store for UME.
I have noticed a problem in the date time string returned in the SPML search response when I search for a user. When you search for a user, normally you get 3 date time strings for "validfrom", "validto" and "lastmodifydate".
These are what have been returned in the SPML response:
<attr name="lastmodifydate"><value>20101019030648Z</value></attr>
<attr name="validfrom"><value>20101019010000Z</value></attr>
<attr name="validto"><value>25001230010000Z</value></attr>
When I check the same user with the user management administration console, I get these:
Date of Account Creation: Oct 19, 2010 2:06:48 PM (Eastern Standard Time (New South Wales))
Start Date of Account Validity: Oct 20, 2010 12:00:00 AM (Eastern Standard Time (New South Wales))
End Date of Account Validity: Dec 31, 2500 12:00:00 AM (Eastern Standard Time (New South Wales))
The timezone I am in is GMT10 (Australia Eastern Standard Time (New South Wales)) and now we in day light saving so effectively we are in GMT11 now.
You can see that the datetime string for "lastmodifydate" correctly reflects what's shown on user management administration console.
But the datetime strings for "validfrom" and "validto" seems to get the conversion wrong: both seem to be using 12 hour format instead of 24 hour format. (2010 10 19 01 00 00Z should be 2010 10 19 13 00 00Z and 2500 12 30 01 00 00Z should be 2500 12 30 13 00 00Z)(I have put in a space in the string to break up the date time components)
Anyone has any idea what went wrong here?
Regards,
GG

Answer 1

Also search service.sap.com for the term "sy-zonlo".
Personally I am a member of the [flat earth society|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society] when it get to this topic, because it causes no end of problems.
Most customers simply stop operations on 31.12.xxxx or before, or alternately use reporting tools to make corrections afterwards.
In the security realm, SAP also respects server side timestamp tolerances (only a few seconds are allowed).
Time is server time in my books. Some people work late, others early - and there is nothing you can control to stop a customer in the US from placing an order via a system in Japan anyway.
Anyway, this is probably a program error with the 12 hour format in the component software or possibly the API interface to user management in your release so you should open a customer message with SAP (my best guess).
Cheers,
Julius