xml-dev - Re: ASN.1

[Marcelo Cantos <marcelo@mds.rmit.edu.au>]

On Thu, Apr 15, 1999 at 01:20:51PM -0400, Charles Reitzel wrote:
> David Brownell wrote:
> >Charles Reitzel wrote:
> >> I would suggest to folks who need this level of data type reuse and/or
> >> sophistication that they look into ASN.1 ...  Perhaps most important,
> >> all datatypes defined using ASN.1 have a standard, unambiguous method of
> >> encoding the data for transmission on the wire.  These rules are known as
> >> the "Basic Encoding Rules", or BER, of ASN.1.
> >
> >A handful of points there.  First, ASN.1 is generally accepted to be far
> >more complex than is justifiable for most applications.  Second, there
> >are multiple syntaxes (the newer one is more cryptic than the original).
> >Third, BER is not the only standardized encoding ... there's also DER, which
> >is a bit more widely used.  (X.509 certs use BER, but most everything else
> >uses DER ... think of BER as "canonical DER".)  Choices, choices.

I would have thought DER was "canonical BER".  DER stands for
Definitive Encoding Rules, doesn't it?

> Never heard of DER.  X.500, SSL, LDAP and SNMP all use BER.  BER is really

Don't forget Z39.50 (a very important protocol in the retrieval
world).  It also uses BER (though I don't know if it mandates it).


Cheers,
Marcelo

-- 
http://www.simdb.com/~marcelo/

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