Re: ASN.1 vs XML (used to be RE: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-pkix-scvp-00.txt)

[Peter Sylvester <[e-mail]>]

> Bill Burr 

> But, I've been around long enough to remember when very similar claims that
> never panned out, were made for SGML and ASN.1 itself.  It seems perhaps a
> bit too early to just assume that XML will be the great unifying data model
> and format for the next millennium. 
> 
> It replacement of ASN.1 be a reasonable idea to consider, but I'd like to
> see how XML plays our a little more, before jumping head first into the XML
> pool.
> Regards,

If you read the chapter abeot service elements in X.400
(for exemple chapter 4 in the 84 version) you do not find
any indication of ASN.1 or even a data format. 

There is a clear distinction between the semantics of the
abstract service, the data formats used, and the way how
several elements are set in order to provide the desired
service elements.

An interesting example to read is RFC987 and its successors, especially
the comments about service elements in RFC822 (they are IMPLIED), etc. 

> Phillip M Hallam-Baker:

> Tony Hoare once argued that programming language features should be 
> argued separately from the syntax. I would be much happier if IETF
> process encouraged a separation of protocol semantics and syntax.

Impossible, this would be too OSI :-) In some cases it seems to
me that the actual semantics of a protocol is not completely defined
in advance, or the developer of the protocol ist playing the
half-open game: I already put the syntax in the public domain, but
not the semantics. 

Peter Sylvester