Introducing XML canonical form (IBM developerWorks) [LWN.net]

Uche Ogbuji discusses XML Canonicalization in an IBM developerWorks article. "XML is careful to separate details of a file or other data source, bit-by-bit, from the abstract model of an XML document. This can be an inconvenience when comparing two XML documents for equality -- either directly (for instance, as part of a test suite) or by comparing digital signatures for security purposes -- to determine whether an XML document has been tampered with in some way. The W3C addresses this problem with the XML Canonicalization spec (c14n), which defines a standard form for an XML document that is guaranteed to provide proper bit-wise comparisons and thus consistent digital signatures. In this article, Uche Ogbuji introduces XML Canonicalization."

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