Some benefits of the binary encoding rules associated with ASN.1 for the
encoding of an XML document are:
- The binary format is not proprietary and is supported by a lot of tools.
- No tree information is stored in the binary encoding.
- Some people say that the major drawback is that a binary encoding is not
readable (unless it is converted back to XML markup), however this is not
necessary for many applications where most messages are never read by humans.
- If a binary encoding was pointless, why would have areas like MPEG7 or WAP
created their proprietary solution?
- XML documents can be exchanged with devices that are deemed to have little
processing power and limited bandwidth.
- High throughput transaction processing systems, low bandwidth communications
and low-power processors with small memory are not generally places where
complex compression algorithms are worthwhile.
- The application is not slowed down because there is no need to build a
dictionary on the fly (the encoder&decoder have been generated once for
all).
- On average the compression rate is better than tools like zip.
- The application of security functions to ASN.1-defined data is
well-established, and the lack of repetitive text sequences, and avoidance of
redundancy and general text orientation in its Packed Encoding Rules (PER) make
non-disclosure functions much less vulnerable to attack than direct encryption
of XML text.
