Re: [apps-discuss] JSON Schema considered harmful

[Tim Bray <[e-mail]>]

Frankly that notion had never crossed my mind, but is there a case for a
“Tao of network protocols” or an “Informational BCP” or some such?  I could
put some cycles into it.  -T

On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 1:12 PM, Dave Crocker <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
>
> On 9/20/2012 1:05 PM, Mark Nottingham wrote:
>
>>
>> On 20/09/2012, at 9:53 AM, Tim Bray <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>>  I believe:
>>> - ASN.1 has been bypassed by history and has truly horrible tooling.
>>> Just don’t go there.
>>> - If you’re interchanging documents, use XML; if (much more common)
>>> you’re interchanging data structures, use JSON.
>>> - Do not use multiple syntaxes for the same protocol. Pick one of XML or
>>> JSON and stick with it.
>>> - The most important thing in defining a protocol is good clean
>>> comprehensible human-readable prose.
>>> - All the protocols I’ve ever seen have important constraints that can’t
>>> be expressed usefully in declarative schema languages.
>>> - Therefore, the next most important thing is an automated
>>> validator/test-suite.
>>> - A schema is a nice-to-have.
>>> - If you’re in XML and want schema-ware, use RelaxNG. For an example,
>>> see RFC4287.
>>> - If your protocol is JSON, investment in a validator/test-suite has
>>> much higher ROI than chasing schema unicorns.
>>>
>>
>> +1; somebody please give this a BCP#.
>>
>
>
> In its current form, perhaps not.
>
> On the other hand, something along this lines could provide exremely
> useful pedagogy in doing specifications work.
>
> It would, of course, need rather more verbose discussion/justification of
> its guidance.
>
> That is, something that says what the characteristics are of the better
> formal notation choices are and what the characteristics of the less better
> ones are.  Then describes the better choices and their enticing features,
> perhaps in terms of tradeoffs.
>
> Then meta-points, such as "choose exactly one".  Etc.
>
> d/
>
> --
>  Dave Crocker
>  Brandenburg InternetWorking
>  bbiw.net
>