Absolutely there are degrees in complexity. But there are no objective measures. PKIX is certainly not a simple specification. It got that way for one simple reason - people used it enough to care about it. So over fifteen years it has grown. My point here is that if you look at an architecture with five layers it will appear to be more complex than one with two layers. But that does not say anything useful about the complexity of the overall system. Is the complexity in the design or in the requirements? If PKIX had originally been designed to anticipate a wider range of functions it could have been made much simpler. We could for example have used the same structure for CRLs and OCSP if both needs had been anticipated up front. Encoding ASN.1 in XML allows implementations to reduce the number of parser/encoder modules that they need to deal with. That represents a reduction in complexity as far as an embedded single purpose device is concerned. If you are writing an all purpose development tool your work has increased. Every change we make has complexity implications, very rarely does the complexity go down. A valid complexity argument in my view would be 'I can meet that set of needs in this way which is empirically less complex by virtue of these considerations (number of states required, number of different syntaxes, administrative burden)'. Simply stating 'that is more complex' does not tell me anything useful. Is the complexity unreasonable considering the objective. In this case the idea of being able to eventually eliminate the need for dual stack implementations of ASN.1 based protocols in the XML/SOAP world is very attractive to me. Having a single standard mapping from the ASN.1 world to the XML one is equally so. > -----Original Message----- > From: Stephane Bortzmeyer [mailto:bortzmeyer@xxxxxx] > Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 11:23 AM > To: Hallam-Baker, Phillip > Cc: ietf@xxxxxxxx > Subject: Re: Document Action: 'Abstract Syntax Notation X > (ASN.X)' to Experimental RFC > > On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 08:09:35AM -0700, Hallam-Baker, > Phillip <pbaker@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote a message of 76 lines which said: > > > Everything we do is complex. > > There are degrees in complexity. Compare RFC 3912 with 3981, > both written by your co-workers :-) > > So, I do not think that the "complexity argument" should be > dismissed. Sometimes, standards are too complicated and one > of the things I like about IETF protocols, is that they are > typically simpler than standards produced by most other organisations. > _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf