What tense are used in these sentences with construction “it has been”?

Question

Sentences:

1. And it has been a pleasure watching you soar.
2. Financially it has been a great move.
3. At best it has been a slow recovery.
4. Overall it has been a difficult weekend.
5. So it has been a seamless transition.
6. And it has been a lot of hard work getting him back to health.
7. But it has been a struggle for them to maintain profitability.
8. Still, it has been a terrific season for Arizona.

I don't understand, are there Present Perfect or Perfect Continuous or other? For perfect I don't see some result of action. For perfect continuous I don't see -ing at the end of the verb. Am I right understand that “it has been” in all these sentences almost equal “it was”? Can you give me a link where this grammatical construction (it has been) is explained in detail (example of using)?

Answer 1

They are all present perfect.

In the present tense these sentence would be:

1. It is a pleasure watching you soar

That is a copular sentence with a dummy subject meaning "Watching you soar is a pleasure". That sentence refers to a present state.

The present perfect means that the state (of pleasure) continued until the present. The meaning, without the dummy subject is:

Watching you soar has been a pleasure (since you started soaring until now).

So you might use 1. when you are saying goodbye to a colleague who began as a junior intern and was very successful at work and "soared" up the corporate hierarchy. The state of pleasure at watching them soar has continued until the present.

The same reasoning applies to all the others.