Subject: Re: ASN.1 vs XML (used to be RE: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-pkix-scvp-00.txt)

From: Peter Sylvester <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 09:57:18 +0200 (MET DST)

> 
> I would go further than to encode the ASN.1 data in XML as some are suggesting
> in this thread.  I would say the ideal solution would be to "reinvent"
> certificate encodings in pure XML and get rid of ASN.1 altogether.  Now having
> said that, I do understand the difficultly in doing so since ASN.1 is already
> well established.
> 
<document>
<anotheruselessComment>
<headerordescription>
<WordwideusabilityClassIdentifier>1</<WordwideusabilityClassIdentifier>
<numberofWordsReturnedinText>few</numberofWordsReturnedinText>
</headerordescription>
<content>
<yetanotherflame>
<sentence>
<bigparagraph>This would be ideal for vendors of disks, bandwidth etc. 
Xml is a rather inefficient encoding of largely structured non structured data.
Remember the origins. The environment where xml, html, sgml, script, latex, etc.
was used initialally was to get annotations <highlight>by hand</highlight> to
textual data. It is also popular because it supports the definition by
name paradigm: Just give something a name, and you know what it is. Replace
all the tags in this message by &lt;a1> &lt;a2> and so on....
</bigparagraph>
</sentence>
</yetanotherflame>
<normaltext>
Look at the examples in
<universalressourceidentifier>
http://asf.gils.net/xer/index.html
</universalressourceidentifier>
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</anotheruselessComment>
<postscript>
<remark><smiley>:-)</smiley></remark>
</postscript>
<signature>PS</signature>
<Zertifikat>untypisch Deutsch</Zertifikat>
</document>

---

From: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 09:07:54 -0700

----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Sylvester <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Monday, July 12, 1999 12:57 AM
Subject: Re: ASN.1 vs XML (used to be RE: I-D
ACTION:draft-ietf-pkix-scvp-00.txt)

> > said that, I do understand the difficultly in doing so since ASN.1 is
already

personally I think that ASN.1 should remain, but that you should be able to
take a compiled ASN.1 Object and install it into an XML structure without
any pain. Likewise there should be some interoperability bridge for the
compiled XML Structures themselves. Otherwise, if it is just a source level
interpretation issue, then the tools that compile ASN.1 should be extended
to support XML structure notation as well as a framework. Or maybe we need
an ASN.2

Just some thoughts - any comments in response?

> Xml is a rather inefficient encoding of largely structured non structured
data.

No XML doesn't encode squat. XML is a representation language and nothing
more. The processors that convert XML into its "presentation form" are what
is at question here.

> textual data.

Absolutely, and their context mandates a presentation engine framework as
the "paper fiber" that the text is layed upon. What this means is that to
date that the XML interpreters are largely inefficient, built for
represnting flattened documents with dynamic links in them... but there is
no reason the DER style encoiding rules could not be adopted for XML
processing if XML coding representation style is selected as a basic
"language for communicating higherlevel transaction models" -
Remember it is the processing that creates the data stream format.

>It is also popular because it supports the definition by

---

From: Timothy Fisher <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 09:20:17 -0700

I would say that if your going to continue to use ASN.1 and/or DER encoding
schemes, the reason for moving to XML loses much of its value, so in that case,
I would say just leave ASN.1 as is.
The value of moving to XML would be to rid ourselves of ASN.1 and DER encoding
complications.

Tim