fast-infoset and fast-webservices (ASN.1 and XML)

["Bob Wyman" <bob@wyman.us>]

Sun has published papers describing the fast-infoset and fast-webservices
efforts on their site. I recommend the reading of:

http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/xml/fastinfoset/
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/WebServices/fastWS/

from the summary of fast-infoset:
"The Fast Infoset standard draft (currently being developed as joint work by
ISO/IEC JTC 1 and ITU-T) specifies a binary format for XML infosets that is
an efficient alternative to XML. An instance of this binary format is called
a fast infoset document. Fast infoset documents are analogous to XML
documents. Each has a physical form and an XML infoset. Fast infoset
documents are, given the results presented, faster to serialize and parse,
and smaller in size, than the equivalent XML documents. Thus, fast infoset
documents may be used whenever the size and processing time of XML documents
is an issue."

"The binary format is optimized to balance the needs of both document size
and processing time. Fast infoset documents are useful in a number of
domains from bandwidth- and resource-constrained mobile devices to
high-bandwidth high-throughput systems. In general, smaller documents are
possible at the expense of either increased processing or loss of
self-description and dependence on a schema. Faster processing is possible
at the expense of loss of self-description and dependence on a schema. For
example, standard compression (LZH) or XML-specific compression techniques
(XMill) may be applied to XML documents to obtain smaller document sizes,
but this adds to the processing time, especially in the compression phase,
and can affect server-side performance."

		bob wyman