RE: Questions about concept of Web service

> Perhaps a similar technology such
> as ASN.1 could have provided such a basis (it has both the abstract data
> metamodel and the concrete syntax bindings that we need), but as a practical
> matter XML has the mindshare, the deployed infrastructure, and the
> widespread tools needed to provide a platform on which Web services can build.  

Interesting that you mention ASN.1. I recently came across some work being done to bring ASN.1 and XML closer together. See http://asn1.elibel.tm.fr/xml/.

It looks like you can now use an ASN.1 specification as a schema against which you can create XML documents (sort of XML Schema and RelaxNG alternative).

Vice versa, you can take an XML Schema and produce an ASN.1 module. Once you do that, you can apply one of the ASN.1 encoding rules (e.g. Packed Encoding Rules, or PER) and produce a document that logically follows the original schema but is encoded in an ASN.1-compliant way. As a corollary, a SOAP message could be more efficiently encoded this way using PER.

All this might sound academic, but I have recently heard ASN.1 SOAP encoding being mentioned in a couple of standard groups, so it might be something to keep an eye on.

Ugo

Received on Friday, 30 May 2003 14:20:23 UTC