RE: [xml-dev] Notation processors

[Nicolas LEHUEN <nicolas.lehuen@ubicco.com>]

>1) A technology called ECN is in the final stages of standardisation,
>which allows "one off" encodings of ASN.1 abstract types into 
>bit strings.
>Whereas the ASN.1 encoding rules work for any arbitrary ASN.1 abstract
>type, an encoding written in ECN is specific to one type only. It is
>designed to bridge between legacy binary encodings and the 
>world of ASN.1
>abstract types. For example, the IPv4 header format might be defined in
>terms of the data it contains as an ASN.1 abstract type, then 
>ECN written
>to map that to the actual bit sequences that make for valid IPv4 packet
>headers. Therefore, ASN.1 abstract values can be mapped to arbitrary
>binary formats.

Could we say that ECN is a "stylesheet" language designed to express the
encoding of data following a particular schema expressed in ASN.1 ?

I was particularly surprised by the quantity of ASN.1 / XML information
provided at [1]. I found the part "Mapping from XML Schemas to ASN.1
modules" particularly interesting... If one can translate an XML schema into
ASN.1, and build an encoder/decoder for any binary format using ECN, the
bridge is nearly built already !

Regards,
Nicolas

[1] http://asn1.elibel.tm.fr/xml/