Re: Abbreviated Tag Names (ASN.1)

[Olivier Dubuisson <Olivier.Dubuisson@francetelecom.com>]

"Thomas B. Passin" wrote:
> 
> 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!

Quite non-fair arguments IMHO. The number of articles in technical journals 
and daily newspapers pushed or payed by big companies is more relevant, I 
think. But it is not the point to open such a discussion here.

> > > - 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.

In my first email, I missed to say that the idea here is to use the ASN.1
module as an XML schema, i.e., a way to validate tag names and data between
these tags.

> 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.

The standardized "ASN.1 markup language" will of course handle all types
provided by ASN.1, which was not the case of the initiative you're
mentioning.

> > 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!

Do you have applications in mind? I'm eager to know!

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

No problem.
-- 
Olivier DUBUISSON
france telecom R&D
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