Michael Mealling sent :
> For all the ASN.1 folks out there:
>
> I'm in the midst of writing up the OID URN namespace document
> (see http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-mealling-oid-urn-00.txt)
> and it has come to my attention that none of the ASN.1 standards
> define the dot-notation that we use in all sorts of RFCs. I'm specifically
> referring to the practice of inserting dots in between each arc as in:
> 1.3.6.1.4.1
>
> Is anyone aware if this is actually spelled out somewhere? I don't
> have the newest ASN.1 docs in front of me so if the're in there
> a page reference would be great.
It is an IETF convention, not one defined in the ASN.1 standards. It is used at least
as early as RFC 1157 (snmp), which refers to "the familiar dot notation" - familiar,
I'd assumed, in the dot notation of IP addresses. (which seems to be first mentioned
in RFC 790, though it says it was already in use then (and had leading zeros)
The ASN.1 standards use spaces between the fields and {braces} round the whole lot in
text representations. They also use name(number) to identify what the fields are, and
the first part of a text representation can also be an assigned asn.1 value (so a
whole subtree can be specified without repeating the value of the root all over the
place)
Peter Furniss
ISO/IEC JTC1 OSI Maintenance Rapporteur (on behalf of BSI)
OSI Maintenance website: http://www.furniss.co.uk/maint
