Re: [apps-discuss] JSON Schema considered harmful

On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 9:26 AM, Erik Wilde <dret@berkeley.edu> wrote:

> i have to admit that i am really curious why the seasoned spec writers
that
> have voiced general concerns about the usefulness of schema languages are
> feeling this way, but so far i have not really understood what they are
> saying. could somebody please try again, i'd really like to understand why
> the general idea of describing protocol syntax in a semi-formal (as
opposed
> to non-formal) way is considered a bad idea.

I gave a preso at IETF70 in Vancouver a few years ago which is advertised
as being XML-centric, but has (I think) useful things to say about
plain-text/binary/ASN.1/JSON/XML, and discusses about the proper place of
schemas: http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/70/slides/xmltut-0.pdf

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.

>
> thanks a lot and kind regards,
>
> dret.
>
> --
> erik wilde | mailto:dret@berkeley.edu  -  tel:+1-510-2061079 |
>            | UC Berkeley  -  School of Information (ISchool) |
>            | http://dret.net/netdret http://twitter.com/dret |
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