[dfdl-wg] Open source DFDL implementation?

[mike.beckerle at ascentialsoftware.com]

Our implementation will be open source.
 
Ascential open source is a "dual use" kind of license. Basically means
Ascential can do what it wants with the software including offer commercial
terms, for everyone else it's like the GPL with the additional requirement
that any mods you make to the software are relicensed back to Ascential.
There are other licenses like this e.g., mySql and cygwin, I'm told there
are others as well.
 
This particular implementation is not intended to be production quality so
I'm not sure the commercial terms matter in the above license. This
implementation is being designed from the ground up to be simple, clear, and
easily modified so that as we iron out the exact semantics of DFDL we can do
so with a real implementation. These goals are in tension with performance,
which we're punting on entirely. So, for example, almost all the Java object
classes in this implementation are immutable objects. This makes the code
dead-simple, but implies lots of object allocation and garbage collection
during execution. We expect several objects to be allocated and discarded
for every bit of input that is touched when reading data, for example. 
 
The GGF doesn't do "reference implementations", so I'm calling this thing an
"Informational Implementation", but the spirit is the same. Our DFDL spec
documents can be far clearer if we have an implementation that is easy and
quick to modify, and one we can run real tests against readily as we debate
the fine points.Our goal at Ascential is for this implementation to exactly
match the standard.
 
Other minor details: We're writing it in pure Java in the latest Java
dialect, Java 1.5, making heavy use of generic types to simplify the code. 
 
...mikeb
 
 


  _____  

From: owner-dfdl-wg at ggf.org [mailto:owner-dfdl-wg at ggf.org] On Behalf Of
Susan Malaika
Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 3:45 AM
To: dfdl-wg at gridforum.org
Subject: [dfdl-wg] Open source DFDL implementation?



People have mentioned various implementations of DFDL on this mailing list.
Will any of them be open source? 

Susan Malaika 




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