Re: Non-XML binary formats.

On Mon, 29 Nov 2004, Stephen D. Williams wrote:

> That's great, what about:
>
> ISO 8601 (calendar date reference)  108 CHF
> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/iso8601.html
> http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/popstds/datesandtime.html

There are two time types (GeneralizedTime and UTCTime) in ASN.1 (based on
ISO 8601) in which the encodings are fully described in the ASN.1
standards with no need to buy ISO 8601.

Work also currently in progress on supporting a more generic TIME type
which will support all formats specified in ISO 8601.

>
> ISO 6903 (Real Decimal Spec)  67 CHF
>
> ISO 2022 character encoding 142 CHF
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_2022

Why do you believe this is necessary?  The ASN.1 group has long been
suggesting that new specs avoid use of the obsolete "GeneralString" and
related string types, and use IA5String (for ASCII) or UTF8String for
international alphabets.

>
> ISO 10646 (UCS, directly related to Unicode) 110 CHF
> http://www.nada.kth.se/i18n/ucs/unicode-iso10646-oview.html

ISO/IEC 10646 is aligned with Unicode published by the Unicode Consortium.
You can just as easily get that free.

>
> I'm sure I missed a number of other references that are needed.
> Pointers to free versions of those would be helpful.  What about a map
> of dependent standards?
>
> I tend to think that the encoding aspects of ASN.1 work should be
> useful, but then I closely examine the encoding for reals and find that
> it is not aligned with the current thinking of many that they want to
> directly transport IEEE and other native formats in a reader-makes-right
> fashion.

Why do you think that ASN.1 cannot transfer arbitrary binary data?

>
> A different and more fundamental issue is that strong schema orientation
> is no longer considered the only or necessarily the best way to work.  A
> number of useful and highly desirable properties, including being able
> to avoid schemas, have been derived from actual use cases.  These
> requirements include many things that don't seem possible with ASN.1
> related standards and technology, or with most other approaches.  It
> makes sense to consider what solutions might answer a more broad set of
> requirements and principles while learning everything possible from
> existing methods.

You seem to be looking for the X.891 (Fast Infoset) standard which is
currently under ballot in ISO.  This will allow arbitrary
namespace-well-formed XML documents to be represented in compact binary
form without an associated schema.

Paul

>
> sdw
>
> Paul Thorpe wrote:
>
> >On Mon, 29 Nov 2004, Stephen D. Williams wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>After 20+ years, ASN.1 related software and standards haven't evolved
> >>and become available in ways that satisfy many current requirements or
> >>developers.  There are many reasons for this.
> >>
> >>Could you point me to free, public specifications of those encoding
> >>format details and the ASN.1 schema definition semantics?
> >>
> >>sdw
> >>
> >>
> >
> >The complete set of ASN.1 standards documents are available free from the
> >ITU-T SG17 website.  The URL is:
> >
> >http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/studygroups/com17/languages/index.html
> >
> >The X.680 and X.690 series of documents make up the complete ASN.1
> >standard.  This includes X.693 (XML encoding rules) and X.694 (Mapping W3C
> >XML schema definitions into ASN.1).
> >
> >----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >Paul E. Thorpe                                 Toll Free    : 1-888-OSS-ASN1
> >OSS Nokalva                                    International: 1-732-302-0750
> >Email: thorpe@oss.com                          Tech Support : 1-732-302-9669
> >http://www.oss.com                             Fax          : 1-732-302-0023
> >
> >
> >>Bob Wyman wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>David Ryan wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>I'd be interested if anyone is working on, or knows of
> >>>>binary formats with similar characteristics of binary XML
> >>>>but is not based on XML?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>	The encoding formats that have been defined for ASN.1 are the
> >>>"classic" binary formats that you would want to study. ASN.1, the "abstract
> >>>syntax notation 1", has been around for something like 20 years now and can
> >>>be used to define a wide variety of formats including text based formats
> >>>like XML as well as the binary formats BER, PER, DER, etc. ASN.1 is most
> >>>commonly known as the schema language for SNMP, X.500 Security Certificates,
> >>>etc. Also, ASN.1 is relied on heavily by the telecommunications industry.
> >>>	In my opinion, the most logical thing for the W3C to do is accept
> >>>ASN.1 as an XML Schema language (it's use as one is defined by international
> >>>ISO standards) and to rely on the 20 years of development by the ASN.1
> >>>community in developing and supporting binary formats. We don't need
> >>>yet-another-standard format and it is unlikely that any new effort is going
> >>>to be able to satisfy any larger community then the ASN.1 effort has been
> >>>able to address in 20 years of listening to and responding to requirements.
> >>>
> >>>		bob wyman
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>--
> >>swilliams@hpti.com http://www.hpti.com Per: sdw@lig.net http://sdw.st
> >>Stephen D. Williams 703-724-0118W 703-995-0407Fax 20147-4622 AIM: sdw
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
>
> --
> swilliams@hpti.com http://www.hpti.com Per: sdw@lig.net http://sdw.st
> Stephen D. Williams 703-724-0118W 703-995-0407Fax 20147-4622 AIM: sdw
>
>

Received on Monday, 29 November 2004 22:55:28 UTC