[occi-wg] On repainting the bikeshed at the 11th hour...

[Tim Bray]

On May 7, 2009, at 6:21 AM, Sam Johnston wrote:

>> I'd like to hear more about why Sun moved off XML onto JSON.
>
> Q-Layer was always JSON wasn't it?

I've already stated that Q-layer was not the issue.  Our cloud-storage  
implementation came first, long before we acquired Q-layer.  The  
initial implementation of the storage service was in JAX-B which gives  
you both XML and JSON for free.  We have a lot of people with net- 
protocol experience in the shop, and we just don't buy into this  
multiple-formats thing; it adds complexity, loses clarity, and isn't  
how the Internet or the Web work.  So we decided to go with just JSON,  
and the code I'm personally writing (Ruby interface to the q-layer  
back-end) is JSON-only and will stay that way.

Why JSON?  Because all our data elements are numbers or short chunks  
of text, do not involve fancy formatting, and fit naturally into lists  
and dicts.  Nesting is non-zero but also not deep (a data center has  
clusters, clusters have machines).  JSON had everything we needed and  
nothing we didn't need.  Plain text makes the nesting hard.  XML is  
overkill.

  -T