Re: Abbreviated Tag Names (ASN.1)

["Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@home.com>]

Olivier Dubuisson has kindly filled us in on the progress of an asn.1-xml
relationship.  This is very good news, indeed.

> Moreover this argument is a kind of dead circle: ASN.1 is not used in
> *some* areas because no free tools are available, and no free tools are
> available because ASN.1 is not used in the areas where people usually
> write free tools. Anyway I think that things will change, for there are
> a bunch of companies which are going to work together on the promotion of
> ASN.1, and I agree with you that providing free tools is a good way to
> promote a technology. (I give some more elements on this topic below.)
>

Html and xml have spread much faster into fairly general use than asn.1 did in
its early life (or even now, perhaps :-) ).  I believe that the ease of
authoring,  the availability of  low cost (or free) browsers, and the number
of readily available programming tools has had a lot to do with this.  Of
course, the availability of the Internet had something to do with it too!

So your news here is very good.

>
> > - There's no standard way to translate between asn.1 and xml, and their
data
> > models are not fully congruent.
>
> Here I say: "not yet"!
> The ASN.1 Project from ITU-T is actually working (jointly with ISO) on 2
> initiatives:
> 1. an XML value notation for ASN.1 types (or "ASN.1 Markup Language") that
> allow to write values by way of an XML markup whose tags are derivated
> from the ASN.1 type names.
> Such an XML value notation can appear in an ASN.1 module, and can be
> used to display ASN.1 values with an XML browser.
> When appended with an XML document header and footer, this value notation
> turns into what could be called "XML Encoding Rules for ASN.1". This will
> be a standard named ITU-T Recommendation X.693 | ISO/IEC 8825-4.
>

I'm eagerly awaiting a URL.  I trust good progress has been made beyond last
year's (non-ITU) XML Encoding Rules that were being worked on.


> 2. an XML Schema to ASN.1 mapping that keeps all the information contained
> in an XML Schema and translates it into equivalent ASN.1 types and subtype
> constraints. You can then use ASN.1 standardized encoding rules such as
> DER (that allow digital signatures and encryption, for example) or PER (to
> very efficiently transmit data over a radio channel, for example), as well
as
> associated ASN.1 tools, for data that are defined in XML.
> This will be a standard named ITU-T Recommendation X.694 | ISO/IEC 8825-5.
>

This will be very nice to have!

Thanks for taking the time to post your information here, Olivier.

Regards,

Tom Passin