Chapter 15: Introduction to Encoding Rules

Chapter 16: The Basic Encoding Rules

Chapter 17: The Packed Encoding Rules

Chapter 18: Other ASN.1-Related Encoding Rules

This first chapter of Section III

• discusses the concept of encoding rules;

• describes the TLV principle underlying the Basic Encoding Rules (BER);

• discusses the question of "extensibility" or "future proofing"

• describes the principles underlying the more recent Packed Encoding Rules (PER);

• discusses the need for "canonical" encoding rules; and

• briefly mentions the existence of other encoding rules.

The discussion of encoding rules in earlier chapters can provide a useful introduction to this concept, but this section has been designed to be complete and to be readable without reference to other sections.

The next two chapters of Section III describe in detail the Basic Encoding Rules and the Packed Encoding Rules, but assume an understanding of the principles and concepts given here.