[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 Bina
Michael Champion wrote: > Trouble is, you can't make sense of an ASN.1 message without having the > schema, and I mean the EXACT schema, used to generate it. That depends what encoding you use! PER (packed encoding) doesn't make any sense without the schema, just like you say. BER (basic encoding, the most popular) makes some sense: The data is annotated with field boundaries and types, so a tool can split it into a tree and show strings as strings and integers as integers and so on, but without variable names. XER (XML encoding) makes some sense: The data is annotated with field boundaries and names, so a tool can split it into a tree and show everything as strings, but without knowledge of types. > That's (oops, > smell of impending flames <grin>) the value proposition for XML in a > nutshell, IMHO, and why it is used in all those projects Simon mentioned > where ASN.1 is, on paper, better suited. I doubt many people who use XML for a project really consider the alternatives. When asked, the average XML user tends to list the reason for using XML as: "I can share information with other programs, with any structure I want" ...because much of the XML hype has been "WOW! Now it's possible to COMMUNICATE BETWEEN BITS OF SOFTWARE using the Internet rather than just using it to COMMUNICATE WITH USERS!". Many Internet developers came straight into Web development, and have never really seen the 'big picture'. Until XML came along, their code talked to: 1) Backend server apps written by remote, distant, clever people: SQL servers, DNS servers, LDAP servers, etc. The thought of writing one's own "server" and "protocol" was unthinkable. 2) Users, via HTML in their browser, which was easy. XML's biggest contribution to the Web has been to get these developers thinking about how easy it is to set up communications between components, rather than really making it easier, IMHO ;-) ABS
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