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Introduction


This chapter describes the ASN.1 Utilities. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with ASN.1.

Application Areas for the ASN.1 Utilities

The main foreseen applications of the ASN.1 Utilities are the following:

Overview of the ASN.1 Utilities

The ASN.1 Utilities support the following main functions:

  1. Perform syntactic and semantic analysis of ASN.1 modules.
  2. Generate SDL code from ASN.1 modules.
  3. Extract the ASN.1 types and values which are referred in the TTCN Suite.
  4. Generate type information for BER encoding and decoding for the SDL Suite.

For further information about BER encoding and decoding, see ASN.1 Encoding and De-coding in the SDL Suite.

In normal cases, the ASN.1 Utilities are completely hidden for the user by the SDL Analyzer and the TTCN Analyzer.

From the user's point of view, an ASN.1 module is very similar to an SDL package: ASN.1 data types can be defined in a module, and then be used within SDL, using operators that are defined in ITU Recommendation Z.105. When an SDL system containing ASN.1 modules is analyzed, the Analyzer will order the ASN.1 Utilities to translate these modules into corresponding SDL packages.

In the TTCN Suite, indirect use of the ASN.1 Utilities is made by the ASN.1-by-reference table. When such a table is analyzed, the TTCN Suite orders the ASN.1 Utilities to extract the ASN.1 types and values in a specified ASN.1 module. For more information about this functionality, see ASN.1 External Type/Value References.


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