Update on Draft 9 status

[Riyad Kalla]

A quick update on UBJSON and Draft 9.

When the Draft 8 spec was originally released, I thought it would be the final version of the UBJSON spec. As the months wore on and more and more features and emails flowed into my inbox, I realized that we were far from done with the spec.

As work on Draft 9 began last year, I thought it would be a quick cycle for us, little did I realize the nuances of all the different uses of UBJSON that were going to come up and make me aware of how much attention to detail is required to really grow a spec in the right direction.

I have tried to keep all of the discussions about the changes coming in Draft 9 and 10 in the GitHub Issues list for the spec so others can contribute, comment, etc. After months of discussions, I think we have a final list of changes for Draft 9 that will be finalized.

The only (huge) issue that could not get finalized for Draft 9 because we need more community involvement is the concept of an ultra-compact, efficient strongly-typed-container (STC) -- in many ways this is nothing more than an ARRAY type with a guaranteed single type of element in it -- it allows for a very compact storage of all the elements since every element in the container doesn't need its leading type marker.

It seems like a no-brainer to add this type to the spec right now, but one of the nuances we are still trying to figure out is that this type opens the door binary data in UBJSON, which opens the door to incompatibility with JSON. For example, converting an STC of int8 values to JSON results in an array of numeric (interger) values. Converting it back to UBJSON results in an ARRAY of int8 values which is NOT the same as the original value (an STC of int8 values). This lack of transitivity is a serious issue and one that we have not reached a consensus on. 

If you have an opinion on this subject, I sincerely request that you read through the existing discussion and contribute your own thoughts to Issue #13 (STC proposal). 

I will continue to modify the spec at http://ubjson.org with the new Draft 9 changes over the coming days.

[riyad.kalla]

Update 4/14/2013

• Draft 9 is approaching finalization. CHAR and UINT8 types were added: http://ubjson.org/type-reference/
• Outstanding issues to be addressed for Draft 9 are all here: https://github.com/thebuzzmedia/universal-binary-json/issues?milestone=1&state=open
• All binary-container/STC/chunked container/etc. conversations were moved to Draft 10: https://github.com/thebuzzmedia/universal-binary-json/issues?milestone=2&state=open
• I still need to rewrite the entire spec itself for Draft 9 to be final: http://ubjson.org/

[riyad.kalla]

To be clear, "rewrite the entire spec itself" -- all of the new type definitions, structures, etc. are all defined in the Type Reference page (http://ubjson.org/type-reference/) -- that work is done, it just needs to be massaged into the front page of the site and old Draft 8 constructs cleaned up.

[Riyad Kalla]

Just to update this thread; all this work has been done and all Draft 10 changes included in the rewrite.