Viewing ASN.1 Data

ASN.1 data is commonly used in security (X.509 certificate, etc), SNMP and several other applications. The detail panel of the results window allows you to view ASN.1 data in a tree format. The column storing the ASN.1 data can be a string based (VARCHAR, CLOB, etc) or BLOB. If the data is stored in a string-based column, it must be base64 encoded. It may optionally be PEM encoded.

PEM

If your ASN.1 data is stored as PEM encoded strings, DB Solo can decode the base64 data between the delimiters and show the ASN.1 data in a tree format. PEM encoding is supported for string based (VARCHAR, CLOB, etc) columns. Currently the following delimiters are recognized:

-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----

-----BEGIN X509 CERTIFICATE-----

-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----

-----BEGIN RSA PUBLIC KEY-----

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

Notice that the corresponding END delimter is needed after the base64 encoded section. The delimiters must contain exactly five dashes (-) on both sides, otherwise DB Solo cannot show the ASN.1 data in a tree format. Naturally, the column data is still shown in text format.

OIDs

By definition, the ASN.1 tree will show you the OIDs using the standard dot notation. It will not know the textual names of the OIDs, unless you specify them. This can be done by modifying the oids.txt file under the /lib directory in the DB Solo installation directory. The file contains simple OID=name mappings as follows:

2.5.4.6=countryName

The default the oids.txt file contains some OID mappings to serve as examples. If you add your own mappings, you have to restart DB Solo before it will pick your mappings. Remember to back up the oids.txt file before you install a new version of DB Solo, otherwise it will be overwritten.