What is JSON ?

Recent update in Information Server 9.2 containing JSON parsing/composing (added into Assembly Editor for hierarchical transformation of new JSON docs). JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) prominent is an alternative to XML in the world of data interchange. JSON is a text format that is completely language independent but uses conventions that are familiar to programmers of the C-family of languages, including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, and many others. These properties make JSON an ideal data-interchange language. JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format.

More about JSON

JSON is the preferred format in “NoSQL” databases. These databases are intended to accommodate massive scalability, designed to deal with data that often does not seamlessly conform to a columnar/relational model, and to be web-oriented at their very core. The most well-known examples of databases of this sort are MongoDB, CouchDB, and Riak. These three are JSON-based, horizontally scalable, and deeply web-driven databases. Also Amazon’s DynamoDB is REST/JSON architecture. Neo4J data base has a REST/JSON API, with no corresponding XML support.

There are a few databases that are XML-based such as MarkLogic, but JSON is more in demand because of its versatile features. There are rapid adoptions of JSON-based storage models.

JSON is specifically for serializing data structures. XML can also represent data structures, JSON is much better at describing data structures. JSON on the other hand is mismatched to describe semantic meaning behind text in documents, which is where XML excels. XML originated as a way to give semantic definition to text in documents.

JSON is built on two structures:

• A collection of name/value pairs. In various languages, this is realized as an object, record, struct, dictionary, hash table, keyed list, or associative array.
• An ordered list of values. In most languages, this is realized as an array, vector, list, or sequence.

Selection between JSON and XML

The requirements of your connection client and the type of data you need to serialize are the main aspect that drives the decision between using XML and JSON. The web service’s APIs have become very important to the web. On top of that, REST is replacing SOAP as a data transfer protocol. XML is not compatible with REST, so if SOAP continues its decline, then XML usage will shrink along with it. REST and SOAP both are different protocols for “How to access Web-Services”

(Differences in REST and SOAP: http://blog.smartbear.com/apis/understanding-soap-and-rest-basics/ )

JSON with Web-Services

As we all know JavaScript is robust and most accepted technology for almost all web services. JSON is better adapted than XML to devices with limited capabilities. As JSON is derived from javascript, it is ideal for integration into web as per our current “Internet Architecture”. Of course there’s an XML parser for node, but it’s largely geared toward dealing with legacy XML-based endpoints. There are few limitations with JSON such as It’s essentially restricted to null, Booleans, numeric, strings, arrays, and dictionaries. It doesn’t even have a Date data type. JSON is thus not only generally less verbose than XML it is more parsimonious in its use of data types. Restricting itself to primitive data types makes JSON interoperable with pretty much any programming language that exists.