3 ms·

What's the alternative to json?

by mardifoufs 3y ago

maxbond 3y ago
There's tons of alternatives. BSON, CBOR, and protobuf are three arbitrary ones.
miohtama 3y ago
XML (:
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  On the database?
  - maxbond 3y ago
    There's actually quite a lot of XML/XSLT support in various proprietary databases (eg RDF databases), and there's Postgres support too: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/functions-xml.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/functions-xml.html Iirc XML support in Postgres predates JSON support.
    - mardifoufs 3y ago
      Woah! Ok I didn't know that. How's the performance?
      - miohtama 3y ago
        Very XML'ish
rubyfan 3y ago
MessagePack - https://msgpack.org https://msgpack.org
- stkdump 3y ago
  Most binary JSON variants including MessagePack deviate from the spirit of JSON in one fundamental way: they are not simple. The JSON file format can accurately be described with a few simple syntax diagram that fit comfortably on a printed page and the spec can be implmented with very little code. A binary file format comes with the theoretical further simplicity advantage that you can leave out conversion of numbers, detection of string length, (un)escaping and dealing with white space/pretty printing. Instead of taking that as gains and be done with it, such formats start introducing (space) microoptimizations, such as many different number formats, variable length numbers for sizes, a wealth of additional data formats such as dates, etc. I think there a two good variants of binary JSON equivalents: one where you have a minimal implementation that makes both reading and writing with the lowest amount of code possible, potentially feeding a SAX-like interface or constructing an in memory representation (DOM-style). The other one would be to facilitate lookups in large documents such as json_extract without parsing the whole document. That would require some clever layout of the data, potentially even as in-file hash tables or similar. I assume that is what SQLite has done.
  - DemocracyFTW2 3y ago
    TBF&H, when you say additional data formats such as dates, dates (including time) are the one format that would be great to have standardized in JSON, due to their inherent complexity. A format for binary data is also missing, but that is downright trivial to do ad-hoc (string literals + encoding hint) when compared to datetimes.
    - stkdump 3y ago
      I don't know, it is trivially simple to choose either Unix timestamp (which is relatively close to what MessagePack is doing) or JSs format [1] if you like a bit more readability and time zone deltas. Or any of the zillion more complex formats such as ISO 8601, etc. In my opinion that would be part of the schema and not the file format. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date#date_time_string_format https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...
vitiral 3y ago
I wrote what I think may be the simplest possible serialization format, though I don't expect it to be a standard anytime soon https://github.com/civboot/zoa https://github.com/civboot/zoa
- theamk 3y ago
  that is one of the more complex serialization formats I have seen.. custom backslash-escapes, 13 operators, "variable compiler", string concatenation, user-defined types (somehow only in binary protocol), two types of maps, special "file path" type... I could say many things about it, but "simplest possible" is not one of them.
  - vitiral 3y ago
    I misspoke, I should have said protocol. I'm referring to the bytecode not the text format. I'm probably throwing away the text format, for the reasons you outlined
  - vitiral 3y ago
    As I said, I mispoke. Here's how I think a JSON equivalent format should be structured: https://github.com/civboot/zoa/blob/main/notes/dynamic.md https://github.com/civboot/zoa/blob/main/notes/dynamic.md "Simple" in that it's trivial to decode with a bytestream and a jump table, and it can be written down very briefly.
  - vitiral 3y ago
    You inspired me to re-examine it. I wrote up the new design here: https://github.com/civboot/civlua/blob/main/zoa/README.md https://github.com/civboot/civlua/blob/main/zoa/README.md It's still in it's initial stages, but I'd love feedback :D

What's the alternative to json?

maxbond 3y ago

There's tons of alternatives. BSON, CBOR, and protobuf are three arbitrary ones.

miohtama 3y ago

XML (:

mardifoufs 3y ago
On the database?
- maxbond 3y ago
  There's actually quite a lot of XML/XSLT support in various proprietary databases (eg RDF databases), and there's Postgres support too: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/functions-xml.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/functions-xml.html Iirc XML support in Postgres predates JSON support.
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    Woah! Ok I didn't know that. How's the performance?
    - miohtama 3y ago
      Very XML'ish

rubyfan 3y ago

MessagePack - https://msgpack.org https://msgpack.org

stkdump 3y ago
Most binary JSON variants including MessagePack deviate from the spirit of JSON in one fundamental way: they are not simple. The JSON file format can accurately be described with a few simple syntax diagram that fit comfortably on a printed page and the spec can be implmented with very little code. A binary file format comes with the theoretical further simplicity advantage that you can leave out conversion of numbers, detection of string length, (un)escaping and dealing with white space/pretty printing. Instead of taking that as gains and be done with it, such formats start introducing (space) microoptimizations, such as many different number formats, variable length numbers for sizes, a wealth of additional data formats such as dates, etc. I think there a two good variants of binary JSON equivalents: one where you have a minimal implementation that makes both reading and writing with the lowest amount of code possible, potentially feeding a SAX-like interface or constructing an in memory representation (DOM-style). The other one would be to facilitate lookups in large documents such as json_extract without parsing the whole document. That would require some clever layout of the data, potentially even as in-file hash tables or similar. I assume that is what SQLite has done.
- DemocracyFTW2 3y ago
  TBF&H, when you say additional data formats such as dates, dates (including time) are the one format that would be great to have standardized in JSON, due to their inherent complexity. A format for binary data is also missing, but that is downright trivial to do ad-hoc (string literals + encoding hint) when compared to datetimes.
  - stkdump 3y ago
    I don't know, it is trivially simple to choose either Unix timestamp (which is relatively close to what MessagePack is doing) or JSs format [1] if you like a bit more readability and time zone deltas. Or any of the zillion more complex formats such as ISO 8601, etc. In my opinion that would be part of the schema and not the file format. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date#date_time_string_format https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

vitiral 3y ago

I wrote what I think may be the simplest possible serialization format, though I don't expect it to be a standard anytime soon https://github.com/civboot/zoa https://github.com/civboot/zoa

theamk 3y ago
that is one of the more complex serialization formats I have seen.. custom backslash-escapes, 13 operators, "variable compiler", string concatenation, user-defined types (somehow only in binary protocol), two types of maps, special "file path" type... I could say many things about it, but "simplest possible" is not one of them.
- vitiral 3y ago
  I misspoke, I should have said protocol. I'm referring to the bytecode not the text format. I'm probably throwing away the text format, for the reasons you outlined
- vitiral 3y ago
  As I said, I mispoke. Here's how I think a JSON equivalent format should be structured: https://github.com/civboot/zoa/blob/main/notes/dynamic.md https://github.com/civboot/zoa/blob/main/notes/dynamic.md "Simple" in that it's trivial to decode with a bytestream and a jump table, and it can be written down very briefly.
- vitiral 3y ago
  You inspired me to re-examine it. I wrote up the new design here: https://github.com/civboot/civlua/blob/main/zoa/README.md https://github.com/civboot/civlua/blob/main/zoa/README.md It's still in it's initial stages, but I'd love feedback :D