From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id VAA06513; Sun, 12 Oct 2003 21:45:12 +0200 (MET DST) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id VAA32767 for ; Sun, 12 Oct 2003 21:45:11 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from mwinf0601.wanadoo.fr (smtp6.wanadoo.fr [193.252.22.25]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id h9CJjA122280 for ; Sun, 12 Oct 2003 21:45:10 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from oops (ARennes-303-1-6-195.w80-15.abo.wanadoo.fr [80.15.137.195]) by mwinf0601.wanadoo.fr (SMTP Server) with ESMTP id 774BE340012B; Sun, 12 Oct 2003 21:45:10 +0200 (CEST) Received: from david by oops with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1A8m9N-0000p0-00; Sun, 12 Oct 2003 21:45:09 +0200 To: William Chesters Cc: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: About ASN.1 and network encoding (was: Re: [Caml-list] extending a type with Marshal) References: <20031008212257.19628.qmail@web40606.mail.yahoo.com> <1065777556.21150.15.camel@lulu.devinci.fr> <16265.6260.517524.854828@beertje.william.bogus> From: David MENTRE Organization: none Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 21:45:09 +0200 In-Reply-To: <16265.6260.517524.854828@beertje.william.bogus> (William Chesters's message of "Sun, 12 Oct 2003 10:01:40 +0100") Message-ID: <87u16e2qbe.fsf_-_@linux-france.org> User-Agent: Gnus/5.1002 (Gnus v5.10.2) Emacs/21.2 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Loop: caml-list@inria.fr X-Spam: no; 0.00; caml-list:01 dmentre:01 chesters:01 williamc:01 paneris:01 mandated:99 avoided:01 ietf:01 declarative:01 gerd:01 dmentre:01 standardized:01 ocaml:01 ocaml:01 writes:01 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk Hello, William Chesters writes: > In summary my feeling is that unless ASN.1 is mandated for a > certiain application it's best avoided because it creates problems > of complexity and over-engineering without actually offering > very much. As a side note, for our own project which needs a client/server encoding convention, I have decided to use XDR. It has some nice properties of ASN.1: standardized (see corresponding IETF RFC); declarative message description; automatic generation of encoder/decoder from/to OCaml data structures. All of that without ASN.1's weight. For OCaml, Gerd Stolpman has written a very nice XDR generator in his RPC package. Yours, david -- David Mentré http://www.linux-france.org/~dmentre/david-mentre-public-key.asc GnuPG key fingerprint: A7CD 7357 3EC4 1163 745B 7FD3 FB3E AD7C 2A18 BE9E ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners