Question:
Why is REAL excluded as an ASN.1 type from GRS-1? In its absence, how should REAL be transferred as GRS-1 content?
Response:
Z39.50 implementors traditionally have not had much confidencein the prospects of interoperability using real numbers encoded in ASN.1, primarily because for any given real number there are often several possible representations. And furthermore, asn.1 tools generally do not support REAL.Usually when someone suggests a requirement for Real, it turns out that the requirement is addressed with fixed point decimal representation as provided by IntUnit, even in cases of complex scientific data. IntUnit allows the representation of an integer together with a scale factor (along with the unit that the number represents). So far, everyone has been satisfied with that.
Status: Approved (8/97)
Library
of Congress(10/22/97)