Time– and Date-Stamp Formats

AlphaPoint software uses two different time– and date-stamp formats, POSIX and Microsoft Ticks. Where the value of a time field key is an integer or long, the value is in POSIX format; when the value of a time field key is a string, it is in Microsoft Ticks format (also called datetime).

• POSIX stores date/time values as the number of seconds since 1 January 1970 (long integer). AlphaPoint software often multiples this number by 1000 for the number of milliseconds since 1 January 1970. Recognize POSIX format: POSIX format is a long integer. It is usually formatted like this: 1501603632000

• Microsoft Ticks (datetime) format represents the number of ticks that have elapsed since 00:00:00 UTC, 1 January 0001, in the Gregorian calendar. A single tick represents one hundred nanoseconds (one ten-millionth of a second). There are 10,000 ticks in a millisecond; ten million ticks in a second. Ticks format does not include the number of ticks attributable to leap-seconds. Recognize Ticks format: Ticks format is a string. In AlphaPoint software, it is usually formatted like this: "2018-08-17T17:57:56Z" Note that a T (for time) separates the initial date from the time. The trailing Z represents the time zone, in all cases in AlphaPoint software, this is UTC (also called Zulu time).