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Re: Draft JSON specification, round 2

Dear all,
On 21/04/17 08:58, James Hester wrote:> (1): crystallographic data are the values taken by datanames defined> in CIF dictionaries ("semantic approach")> (2): crystallographic data are the values taken by datanames defined> in CIF dictionaries in files with CIF syntax ("syntactic approach")
the distinction here is well expressed and it explains the divergencebetween "lightweight" and "high fidelity" approaches. However, as notedby James, semantic representations of uncertainties and two flavors ofnull yet have to be devised.
> I don't think round tripping is a worthwhile goal (but please provide> a use case if you think it is), nor compromising on the advantages> that JSON gives us by making the JSON unwieldy.
We have devised our COD-JSON format for three reasons: (i) to passparsed CIF data to scripts in programming languages that do not have CIFparsers, (ii) to avoid multiple CIF parsing in pipelines (JSON parsingis somewhat faster than CIF) and (iii) to experiment with CIF data indocument-oriented databases. Applications (i) and (ii) benefit from thesyntactic approach, especially if they output CIF (we would like to haveit as similar to the original as possible). For application (iii)semantic approach should be sufficient.
In addition, I believe that CIF validators will need the syntacticapproach as they have to check data types, whether certain data itemscan have precisions or be in a loop and so on. However, probably mostCIF validators will analyze data in CIF format, not JSON.
Best wishes,Andrius
-- Andrius MerkysPhD student at Vilnius University Institute of Biotechnology, Saulėtekio al. 7, V325LT-10257 Vilnius, LithuaniaLecturer at Vilnius University Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Naugarduko g. 24LT-03225 Vilnius, Lithuania

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