max wrote:
you should always compare the actual milliseconds value to validate the contents of dates - not their printed value.
I'm actually comparing the dates using equals().
assertEquals(normRec1, normRec2);
The equals method traverses through the objects and eventually compares the date components I described in my original post. Exactly what GregorianCalendar.equals() does I don't know but it does not just check for identity. In any case the two dates have values that differ by an hour. The millisecond values are not the same.