Datetime field values differ in format

[VKTB]

I have an investigation in my database with the following CREATE_TIME and MOD_TIME values:

CREATE_TIME: 12-SEP-07 13.59.58.000000000
MOD_TIME: 09-MAR-20 15.19.49.823000000

When I queried for this investigation over SOAP, I noticed that the values for these fields differ in format (the former ends with +01:00 whereas the latter ends with Z):

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<S:Envelope xmlns:S="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
    <S:Body>
        <ns2:searchResponse xmlns:ns2="http://icatproject.org">
            <return xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:type="ns2:investigation">
                <createTime>2007-09-12T13:59:58+01:00</createTime>
                <modTime>2020-03-09T15:19:49.823Z</modTime>
            </return>
        </ns2:searchResponse>
    </S:Body>
</S:Envelope>

[RKrahl]

What database backend are you using for icat.server?

[RKrahl]

Note that if I take these dates without any time zone indication as British local time I get:

$ TZ=Europe/London date -d "2007-09-12T13:59:58" --iso-8601=second
2007-09-12T13:59:58+01:00
$ TZ=Europe/London date -d "2020-03-09T15:19:49.823" --iso-8601=second
2020-03-09T15:19:49+00:00

E.g. for the 2020-03-09 GMT is in force, whereas for the 2007-09-12 we have BST. So apparently the values you get are consistently British local time. The time zone Z is just a (ISO 8601) synonym for +00:00.

[VKTB]

What database backend are you using for icat.server?

It is pointed at an Oracle database.

[RKrahl]

It is pointed at an Oracle database.

AFAIR, Oracle stores date and time values without any time zone indication. I believe, it then depends on the locale setting of the Payara process what time zone it assumes when reading those values from the database. The values you quote would then be consistent with a British locale setting.