Re: Abbreviated Tag Names (ASN.1)

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

Charles Reitzel wrote:
> 
> This is indeed a positive development.  Thanks for the info.
> 
> Would a result of this effort would be that XML would be a standard way to
> transform between developer-readable XML and BER|DER|PER data?

*ASN.1* would be the standard way, for it is were this "mapping" will be
defined ;-)

> Would XML
> Schema would be an alternate language to define ASN.1 types? 

Definitely not.

> Or both?

The idea is for the ASN.1 module to be the schema against which XML-defined
data can be defined.
BTW I'm not opening a war here; the idea is not for ASN.1 to replace
XML Schemas or RELAX or whatever (even though it is a good competitor!);
the idea is to continue to use the ASN.1 module as a schema for data that
are already specified in ASN.1, but offer them "XML encoding rules" or
a way to display with a XML browser.

> What is the scope for data types?

All ASN.1 types will be taken into account.
On the other way round, all XML datatypes will have their counterpart in
a standardized ASN.1 module.

> Many of the interesting data types, such
> as certificates, are defined by X.500 series of standards.  There are of
> course many other standards that build on ASN.1, so I am curious about the
> approach taken to provide extensible support for datatypes.

I don't folow what you mean by "extensible" here. As I said, all ASN.1
built-in types will be taken into account, that is, all types that can be
defined in ASN.1 will be taken into account!

> Will an XML
> Schema document be written that corresponds to the ASN.1 notation in each of
> the various ITU standards?

We are going to provide rules to produce an XML Schema from an ASN.1 module.
Hence, it will be easy to program a tool which implements these rules.

> If nothing else, it would be a good test for
> building modular, layered XML Schemas.
> 
> I checked out the URLs you included and found references to the current
> activities you mention.  I'll check back for updates at
> http://asn1.elibel.tm.fr/en/standards/index.htm.

OK. We'll provide some more information at http://asn1.elibel.mt.fr/xml
next week (I hope).
-- 
Olivier DUBUISSON
france telecom R&D
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