Our team (Ops Center) has been using JSON. Our experiences have been
positive.
We are mainly using is as a fast/small replacement for XML
serialization.
Not having comments has not been an issue so far.
In general, my tendency is now to use JSON over XML whenever possible.
Arieh
On Oct 23, 2009, at 7:25 PM, Kyle McDonald wrote:
> Shawn Walker wrote:
>> Sarah Jelinek wrote:
>>> My biggest concerns about moving to JSON are:
>>> -No commenting. We absolutely need this for clarity. We do not
>>> have any tools to generate or modify our manifests, so the
>>> comments in our current manifests help users understand the
>>> contents.
>>
>> The original JSON specification supported comments, but in later
>> versions they removed this for the lame reason that "no-one used
>> it" as best I can tell.
>>
>>> -Unicode only support.
>>>
>>> I don't think that JSON is a viable option for us at this point.
>>> As a result, my recommendation is to continue using XML.
>>
>> So despite these disadvantages, there are a few things about JSON
>> (and this is why we ended up using it for pkg(5)) that are very
>> attractive:
>>
>> * far more readable to mere mortals than XML, example:
>>
>> {
>> "publishers": ["opensolaris.org", "sun.com"],
>> "packages": ["foo", "bar", "baz"],
>> }
>>
> While not perfect, that is *much* better than XML.
>> Imagine the same in XML :) This also significantly can reduce file
>> size.
>>
>> If the Unicode only aspect doesn't bother you, and you can come up
>> with a basic container format that allows comments, and none of the
>> other issues are a problem, then the advantages above may be more
>> important to you.
>>
> While it might increase memory usage a 'comment' attribute could
> probably just be added to the data structure, and the comments would
> be happily read in along with the data. They'd be written out again
> too I imagine which could have it's uses.
>
> -Kyle
>
>> It isn't an easy choice, and I won't try to persuade you one way or
>> another. If you're already using XML and everyone's happy, then go
>> for it :)
>>
>> Cheers,
>
>
Arieh Markel Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Sun OpsCenter - Virtualization Mgmt 9 Hamenofim St. 8th Floor. MS
ETLV04
e-mail: arieh.markel at sun.COM Herzliya Pituach, Israel
http://blogs.sun.com/arieh Phone: +972-9-971-1291 (70)
x12291
Mobile: +972-54-238-2771
