Cart
[Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries]
Joe English wrote: > I find it more valuable that new programs should be > able to read old data than that old programs should > handle (the same old data structures dressed up in) > new concrete syntax. ASN.1 works both ways. Given the Encoding Control Notation and the ability to define new encoder/decoders, you can build an ASN.1 system that will read any old data structure and then have it converted to any of the other syntaxes (assuming that the target syntax is rich enough to express the data...) So, yes, an ASN.1 suite should make it easier for you to define the precise conversions of old legacy data to XML... Or, BER, or PER, or etc... Since ASN.1 makes a clear distinction between abstract syntax and concrete syntax, the only question is: "Can you translate your concrete syntax to the abstract form?" If the answer is yes, you get interchange. And, since ASN.1 has been in the field for so long, it has already dealt with most of the issues related to these conversions. The essential thing here is to have an abstract, intermediary representation and then have deterministic transformations to and from concrete syntax. It is very much the same as the well respected rule of program design that calls for making a distinction between interfaces and implementations (or, as I used to say back in the 80's "Separation of Form and Function."... ) bob wyman
|
