Setting up relative date-time

A relative date-time is a date-time that is not bound to any time zone. In the IBM® Maximo® Real Estate and Facilities Workplace Reservation Manager (Reserve) application, the Reserve application administrator can set any date-time field as relative by selecting the Relative check box in the date-time field properties of the Data Modeler.

Relative date-times remain consistent across time zones until bound to a specific context, enabling administrators to define calendar events once and reuse them across multiple time zones.

A relative date-time, in isolation, looks the same no matter where it is viewed in any time zone. However, once it is bound to a context in a particular time zone, it virtually becomes a fixed date-time. This is different from a regular fixed date-time, which is a point in time beyond the epoch, January 1, 1970 00:00 UTC. Depending on the time-zone perspective, the fixed date-time could look different while still representing the same point in time.

For example, let's consider a relative date-time with the New Year’s beginning time to be January 1, 2022 00:00. This does not represent a fixed point in time. This same relative New Year’s beginning time can be used by two resources to represent the same date-time in two different time zones, but they are actually two different fixed date-times. The benefit of a relative date-time is that an administrator can define it one time while reusing it in multiple places.

As another example, an administrator may set up a "US Holiday" calendar which has New Year's Day, Presidents' Day, Thanksgiving Day, etc. Since the US covers many time zones, the administrator can set up the "US Holiday" calendar one time and reuse it for resources in a variety of time zones. At runtime, a relative date-time that is used in the context of any particular resource is considered bound or fixed to the time zone of that context.