These functions manage the encoding and decoding of certificates and related material for use over an Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) network (as described in the CCITT X.200 recommendation). OSI is an internationally standardized architecture that governs the interconnection of computers from the physical layer up to the application layer. The OSI method of specifying abstract objects (data) is called Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) encoding and decoding (as defined in CCITT X.209). Additional information on encoding and decoding is presented in Certificate Encoding/Decoding.