[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: ASN.1 is an XML Schema Language (Fix those lists!) and Bin
Robin Berjon wrote: > what intrigues me most is not the absence of open source implementations, > but rather the absence of open source projects around ASN.1 that implement > at least a sizeable chunk of the ASN.1 body of specifications and/or > have a sufficiently active community working towards that goal. As I mentioned in an earlier mail, much of the internet development that goes on these days is focused on the specific needs of some interest group or protocol, rather than the development of core technologies. This is seen clearly in the many open source implementations of ASN.1 subsets. It turns out that almost each of these projects was implementing ASN.1 or an associated encoder/decoder in order to accomplish some specific application related goal. Since accomplishing the goals of any one project always requires only a subset of full ASN.1, what we have is many partial implementations. Thus, we've got OCLC libraries for encoding/decoding BER in the Z39.50 community -- but no OCLC ASN.1 compiler or any of the other encoders since they aren't needed by Z39.50. The SNMP community did the same thing, their systems need a limited subset of ASN.1 encoding and that's all they could justify writing. You'll also find, for instance, quite number of open source packages that can only handle the limited subset required by X.500 certificates. All but a few of the "Open Source ASN.1" projects have been doing ASN.1 as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Unfortunately, the projects that had grander goals tended to run out of steam back in the early 90's -- before open source became as important as it is today -- as OSI lost favor and as it became obvious that implementors wouldn't be able to compete with the high quality commercial implementations. The problems ASN.1 has had are, I think, largely due to when it was defined and the context in which it was defined. ASN.1 came out in a world where Open Source was not important and by the time Open Source became important, ASN.1 wasn't "cool" any more. Few people could understand the value of fully implementing a system when they could only identify needs for a subset. Also, ASN.1 was defined in the OSI world... Of course, the world is very different today. Today, we have the XML movement which has revived all the religion of generic data encoding and interchange that was so important to us back in the 80's when ASN.1 first was defined. And, the XML movement has shown people the value and "coolness" of working on general framework components... (XML is, on its own, beginning to approach the complexity and breadth of OSI...) Today, it makes more sense to propose an Open Source ASN.1 than it has for years. Not for technical reasons, but for political or social reasons. Nonetheless, my goal in starting this thread wasn't to argue for an Open Source project but rather simply to bring awareness to the fact that ASN.1 should be considered just as much an "XML Schema Language" as any other. Also, to point out that ASN.1 provides a solution to at least a large number of the requirements for "binary XML." Given that awareness, there are many paths that can be taken. bob wyman
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|