On Nov 12, 2008, at 12:44 PM, rajith pr wrote:
Iam new to writing dissectors. While study one of the dissector code
i found it reads a dictionary.xml file. Can somebody throw some
light on to the usage of xml in dissecting.
XML isn't used generically in dissecting. The Diameter (RFC 3588)
protocol has a message format with a simple fixed-length header
followed by a list of attribute-value pairs; the set of attributes is
extensible. The Wireshark Diameter dissector has a dictionary that
contains descriptions of Diameter attributes; that dictionary happens
to be an XML file.
The RADIUS (RFC 2865) protocol is similar to Diameter, in that its
messages have a simple fixed-length header followed by a list of
attribute-value pairs, and the Wireshark RADIUS dissector has a
dictionary, but the dictionary is not an XML file (it's in the same
format as the FreeRADIUS dictionary, so that the FreeRADIUS dictionary
files can be used).