Work on creating a textual encoding of Abstract Syntax Notation 1 (ASN.1) in
XML, called the XML Encoding Rules (XER), an alternative to the Basic
Encoding Rules, which are a binary format.
See http://asf.gils.net/xer/standard.html for the current working draft
(looks pretty near complete from my casual inspection).
Unfortuantely, chunks of XER'ed ASN.1 can only really be exchanged between
two points that have prior knowledge of the ASN.1 specification of the
information. What would be really interesting is to develop an XML encoding
of ASN.1 itself, and then be able to send the ASN.1 and the data in one
package across the network. This could prove to be an interesting end-run
around the current XML Data work, especially since ASN.1 does have an
existing set of (albeit expensive) tools for working with it.
- Jim