Secure XML: The New Syntax for Signatures and Encryption

9.4. The XML Canonicalization Data Model

XML canonicalization uses an extension of the XPath data model. For ex ample, all adjacent text content in input is combined into a single text node and CDATA section boundaries are discarded.

The formal definitions of standard XML canonicalizations state that they use an extension of the XPath data model and take two or three inputs. The first must be either an XPath node-set or a sequence of octets. The second is a Boolean flag that indicates whether to preserve comments. The third, which only applies to Exclusive XML Canonicalization, is a list of namespace prefixes to be treated inclusively. If the first parameter is an octet sequence, it is parsed as XML into an XPath node-set and so must be well ...