RE: A comparison of ABNF, ASN.1 and XML

> My personal wish would be to have such a neat and strongly
> typed metalanguage as ASN.1, but such neat and readable
> encoded data as XML. (I know that there is something called
> XER. But I do not believe that is what I am asking for. XER
> is an attempt to encode ASN.1 into a subset of XML. What I
> would wish is an ASN.1-like replacement for the DTD meta
> language, i.e. a meta language which can replace DTD for
> the full span of the XML language.)

The W3C is attempting to create such a thing - the XML Schema
language.  The current work divides the problem into two spaces

Structures - http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1/
Datatypes  - http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/

For W3C members (I know, this doesn't help everyone here), the
working group page is:
  http://www.w3.org/XML/Group/Schemas.html
and the associated Interest Group charter page is
  http://www.w3.org/XML/Group/1999/05/xml-schema-ig-charter.html

--
Scott Lawrence      Director of R & D        <lawrence@agranat.com>
Agranat Systems   Embedded Web Technology   http://www.agranat.com/

Received on Friday, 3 March 2000 12:20:05 UTC