Suppose that you want a timestamp that includes milliseconds of a second (e.g. YYYYMMDD HH:MM:SS.SSS). Since it is not possible to get milliseconds when using time.strftime(), you must extract the milliseconds from the value returned by time(). For example:

import time

def timestamp():
   now = time.time()
   localtime = time.localtime(now)
   milliseconds = '%03d' % int((now - int(now)) * 1000)
   return time.strftime('%Y%m%d%H%M%S', localtime) + milliseconds

This code produces timestamps such as 20080610152447302.

This script defines a function that can be used as needed. It should be placed in the Global Outbound Preprocess Script (for generating messages), or the Global Inbound Script (for parsing messages). When you want to use the script, you call it by placing the following code in the appropriate segment or table level script:

value = timestamp()