Different modes of communication In Canada, electronic mail is used for ILL messaging. This is the logical choice for the Canadian library community, which is spread across five time zones, and for Interlibrary Loan services that had turn-around times measured in days and weeks, rather than hours. ASN.1 BER could not be used with the e-mail services available in the early 1990s. These packages can handle the OSI standard-transfer syntax, ASN.1 BER, without problem. IPIG implementors determined that the flexibility of the database structure means that the length of data elements need not be mandated by the standard profile.
Developers feel confident that they can accept data sent in any length.
Current minimum field lengths are large enough to accommodate the maximum used by most ILL systems. However, if an early Canadian application receives a message from an IPIG application in which the data are too long, the early Canadian application will truncate the field at the maximum length specified, and data will be lost. No such formal program has been set up for the IPIG implementors. The Canadian conformance testing program was very expensive. Therefore, individual implementors were left to make their own testing arrangements.