ASN.1

This proposal from the High Performance Working Group entails the use of ASN.1 (Abstract Syntax Notation 1) to produce fast and compact encodings of FIX messages.

The use of ASN.1 is one of the three major approaches to the efficient encoding of FIX that have been developed and are being proposed by the High Performance Working Group; the others being the use of a new, FIX-specific binary encoding called Simple Binary Encoding (SBE) and use of Google’s Protocol Buffers (GPB). The mapping to ASN.1 defined in the proposed technical specification can be used for any FIX message (as defined in the FIX Unified Repository), and generates a set of definitions in the ASN.1 notation (i.e., an ASN.1 schema). The resulting ASN.1 message definitions can then be encoded by applying standard encoding rules to produce efficient binary encodings.

The Release Candidate 1 of the ASN.1 encoding specification was posted for public review in June 2013 and no feedback comments were received. Therefore the document is now proposed, unchanged, as a Draft Standard.