Products

StreamSec ASN.1 Tools 3.0

StreamSec ASN.1. Tools gives support for ASN.1 and DER to Delphi developers

ASN.1 is a language with the sole purpose of defining data formats. It is useful when you stream data from one application to another or just save data to a file.

The Language Guide for StreamSec ASN.1 Tools is available online here.

To purchase a developer license for StreamSec ASN.1 Tools click here.

To view some screenshots click here.

The main advantages of using ASN.1 for data definition are:

• Overview and Documentation. If you are writing directly to a tStream or a tWriter when saving your data the only definition of the data format will be your code. ASN.1 might help you structure your data.

• Flexibility. While data bases typically have an architecture that is optimized for storage of uniform data, ASN.1 is a better choice when dealing with heterogeneous data quantities that have to be stored in a variable or complex format for compactness.

• Interoperability. ASN.1 is a standard for data format definitions that can be used on almost any contemporary platform.

• Maintainability. By separating the data format definition from your code it becomes easy to reuse data that was stored with a different application without having access to the source code for that application.

• Extensibility and Compatibility. ASN.1 contains key words such as OPTIONAL and CHOICE that can be used when adding fields to existing data formats without loosing the ability to load existing data stored on the old format.

ASN.1 is typically associated with the Basic Encoding Rules (BER) or Distinguished Encoding Rules (DER). BER and DER are semi-raw data formats that append a header to each field that identifies the field and specifies its length.

StreamSec ASN.1 Tools has four elements:

1. An ASN.1 Design time Editor and Precompiler that integrates with the Delphi IDE and gives you Syntax Highlighting (Delphi 7 only). The precompiler outputs error messages with reference to source line and column when syntax errors are encountered.

2. A Meta Data Filer. The ASN.1 precompiler outputs data in MMF format that contains the field values of the objects used for DER parsing. The Meta Data Filer is a generic technology that can be used for other purposes as a substitute for the VCL tReader and tWriter classes.

3. Generic classes for DER parsing.

4. A precompiler that generates Delphi interfaces and classes from ASN.1 and MMF files.