Re: [Gen-art] Genart last call review of draft-ietf-jsonpath-base-17

[Tim Bray <[e-mail]>]

 With respect, I disagree with the reviewer's characterization of the
document and thus with her conclusion.

As she says, this specification does not specify nor require any behavior
of JSON parsers, as specified at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8259.html#section-9 - it is orthogonal to
RFC8259.

Rather, it assumes that such a parser has, per 8259, transformed the JSON
text into another representation, one that allows software access to the
structure of the document, without concern for its input textual form. This
draft specifies the JSONPath syntax, and the results of applying that
syntax to such a representation.

I do not understand the reviewer’s point #2; is the syntax that might
change that of JSON itself, or of JSONPath?  If there is a revision of JSON
with new syntax (and presumably semantics), a large number of existing RFCs
that rely on the syntax and semantics in RFC8259 would have to change, this
among them. (This probably won’t happen.) The point about new parsing
techniques may be true, but is not relevant to this draft, which assumes
that the JSON input has been parsed and its structures made available to
software.

On the third point, IANA registration is proposed to give JSONPath a way to
evolve without core syntax modification, by providing a “function”
primitive; new functions may be created and, for interoperability and
namespace management, be registered.

<Co-chair hat: on> It is the consensus of the WG that a standards-track RFC
would be helpful to the community of developers who use JSONPath in a
variety of protocols and applications.

On Aug 10, 2023 at 11:18:21 AM, Linda Dunbar via Datatracker <
[e-mail]> wrote:

> Reviewer: Linda Dunbar
> Review result: Not Ready
>
> I am the assigned Gen-ART reviewer for this draft. The General Area
> Review Team (Gen-ART) reviews all IETF documents being processed
> by the IESG for the IETF Chair.  Please treat these comments just
> like any other last call comments.
>
> For more information, please see the FAQ at
>
> <https://wiki.ietf.org/en/group/gen/GenArtFAQ>.
>
> Document: draft-ietf-jsonpath-base-17
> Reviewer: Linda Dunbar
> Review Date: 2023-08-10
> IETF LC End Date: 2023-08-09
> IESG Telechat date: Not scheduled for a telechat
>
> Summary:
>
> The document specifies a method to parse the JSON objects to get values and
> specifies the syntax to retrieve a list of values. The document reads well.
> However, like any software programs, errors can be encountered at run time
> even
> after careful review.
>
> Major issues:
> The major issue is that this document should not be “Standard Track”
> because:
> 1.      Existing parsers for JSON data don’t need to change to comply with
> the
> syntax specified in this document. 2.      Like SQL, this document
> specified
> syntax may change as more ways being developed by implementers to parse the
> JSON objects. 3.      It is not clear why IANA registration is needed.
>
> Minor issues:
>
> Nits/editorial comments:
>
> Thanks, Linda Dunbar
>
>
>