JSON Schema Definition Languages
We recently settled on using JSON as the preferred format for the REST-based distributed application on which I am working. We don’t need the expressiveness of XML and JSON is a lot cheaper to generate and parse, particularly in Ruby. Now we are busy defining dialects to encode the data we have, which is happy work. The only problem is there is not a widely accepted schema language for describing JSON documents.
Ouch! Read the comments under Peter’s post. I know I’ll likely get flamed for this, but what about coming up with a standard way to map Infoset trees and JSON object graphs. Having done that, then can’t you bidirectionally infer JSON schemas? Even without mapping all the constructs, can’t we at least agree to use XSD lexical standards and not come up with yet another way to format a date?
In the early days of the WS-I Basic Profile, a side-project was started up to create a standard mapping methodology between XML and objects. This was before JSON, though — the hope was to eliminate the RPC-literal SOAP style from the Profile by mollifying the JAX-RPC constituents. That plan didn’t work. I was later told that the authors (Box, Ballinger, Ewald) wound up getting a patent for the work (assigned to Microsoft).
Ever come up with anything? I’d be very interested in a likely standard.