Re: W3C XML QL and DASL: 2 use ASN.1?

>BTW, is there anyone in the DASL community monitoring the work on 
>XML Encoding Rules in ASN.1? I've been thinking it might be a real 
>good idea to have an ASN.1/XER specification of the DASL protocol. 
>In addition to having a precise specification for on-the-wire 
>interoperability, you would have a built-in mechanism for DASL 
>to be transmitted in a choice of highly efficient encodings.

Well I certainly am not.  I am not sure it makes sense for DASL, given
DASL's charter, which is that DASL be an application of HTTP.  Unless and
until HTTP itself uses ASN.1, neither will DASL.  

Also, I am not sure that there's much importance in getting "a highly
efficient encoding" on the wire.  In my opinion, the chief obstacles for
DASL are  most likely (here I am combining both technical and political
barriers)
 1) the effort to implement it.  This argues for keeping it simple
 2) The cost of executing the search on the server end
 3) the difficulty of determining which optional features are supported,
and using them.

The mere size of the XML packets on the wire is unlikely to prevent anyone
from using DASL.  And if this indeed is a problem, surely the XML can be
compressed using traditional compression?

Received on Sunday, 14 November 1999 08:18:31 UTC