About Date Properties

This section describes how the date/time properties and ENOVIA Live Collaboration settings affect the way date/times are read, stored, and displayed in ENOVIA Live Collaboration and ENOVIA Business Process Services applications.

The following topics are discussed:

Relationship Between BPS and ENOVIA Live Collaboration Dates

This graphic shows which settings affect the input and display of date/times in ENOVIA Business Process Services-based applications and the relationship between these settings and ENOVIA Live Collaboration settings. The default settings work and should only need to be changed under specific conditions listed in Platform and Application Date Formats.



Most date fields require the user to choose the date using the Calendar chooser and do not require or allow a time entry. If the user's input does not include the time but the date format that eMatrixInputDateFormat matches, either NORMAL or TERSE, does include the time, the ENOVIA Business Process Services enters midday (12:00 noon) for the time. If the matching ENOVIA Live Collaboration date format does not include the time, the date passes to ENOVIA Live Collaboration without a time and ENOVIA Live Collaboration adds it. Typically, only a TERSE format would be defined without a time.

Platform and Application Date Formats

The eMatrixDateFormat and eMatrixInputDateFormat system properties have no affect on how dates are displayed in ENOVIA Business Process Services-based applications. These properties define the Java format to use to send dates to ENOVIA Live Collaboration and to read them from ENOVIA Live Collaboration. Therefore, they must define the same formats that are defined for dates in ENOVIA Live Collaboration.

Only change these properties if one of these conditions apply:


  • You change the ENOVIA Live Collaboration NORMAL format.

    You can change the NORMAL format if you use ENOVIA Matrix Navigator for the desktop or Web and want a different input and display format, or if you have a date text field in a ENOVIA Business Process Services-based application that does not use the eMatrixDateFormat class to parse the date and you want a format other than the default format to be accepted for input. In such a case, the system parses the entered date using NORMAL and then TERSE just as it does in ENOVIA Matrix Navigator.

    If you change to the NORMAL format, you must also change the eMatrixDateFormat and eMatrixInputDateFormat properties in emxSystem.properties so they are in sync. (If eMatrixInputDateFormat has been changed to match TERSE, there is no need to change it when NORMAL changes.)

  • You decide to match eMatrixInputDateFormat with TERSE instead of NORMAL.

    You can map eMatrixInputDateFormat to TERSE if your application has freeform date entry fields that use the eMatrixDateFormat class and you want it to accept the TERSE format instead of NORMAL. The ENOVIA products typically use the Calendar chooser instead of freeform text fields.

    You can change to the TERSE format, for example, to provide an alternate format that will be accepted as input. You can make this change without changing the eMatrixInputDateFormat as long as eMatrixInputDateFormat matches the NORMAL format. By default, the TERSE setting is moy/dom/yr4.

Time String Format

To specify the time format, use a time pattern string. In this pattern, all ASCII letters are reserved as pattern letters, which are defined as the following:

Symbol Meaning Presentation Example
G era designator (Text) AD
y year Number) 1996
M month in year (Text & Number) July & 07
d day in month (Number) 10
h hour in am/pm (1~12) (Number) 12
H hour in day (0~23) (Number) 0
m minute in hour (Number) 30
s second in minute (Number) 55
S millisecond (Number) 978
E day in week (Text) Tuesday
D day in year (Number) 189
F day of week in month (Number) 2 (2nd Wed in July)
w week in year (Number) 27
W week in month (Number) 2
a am/pm marker (Text) PM
k hour in day (1~24) (Number) 24
K hour in am/pm (0~11) (Number) 0
z time zone (Text) Pacific Standard Time
' escape for text (Delimiter)
'' single quote (Literal) '

To display a date, the system converts this format to the display format defined by the DisplayFormat and DisplayTime properties and by the browser's language/region setting. This property does not affect the display of dates in ENOVIA Business Process Services-based applications.

The count of pattern letters determine the format:


  • (Text): 4 or more pattern letters--use full form, < 4--use short or abbreviated form if one exists.
  • (Number): the minimum number of digits. Shorter numbers are zero-padded to this amount. Year is handled specially; that is, if the count of 'y' is 2, the Year will be truncated to 2 digits.
  • (Text & Number): 3 or over, use text, otherwise use number.

Any characters in the pattern that are not in the ranges of ['a''z'] and ['A'..'Z'] will be treated as quoted text. For instance, characters like ':', '.', ' ', '#' and '@' will appear in the resulting time text even they are not embraced within single quotes.

A pattern containing any invalid pattern letter will result in a thrown exception during formatting or parsing.