Amazon open-sources Ion – a binary and text interchangable, typed JSON-superset
This reminds me a lot of Avro:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;avro.apache.org&#x2F;docs&#x2F;current&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;avro.apache.org&#x2F;docs&#x2F;current&#x2F;</a><p>They both have self-describing schemas, support for binary values, JSON-interoperability, basic type systems (Ion seems to support a few more field types), field annotations, support for schema evolution, code generation not necessary, etc.<p>I think Avro has the additional advantages of being production-tested in many different companies, a fully-JSON schema, support for many languages, RPC baked into the spec, and solid performance numbers found across the web.<p>I can&#x27;t really see why I&#x27;d prefer Ion. It looks like an excellent piece of software with plenty of tests, no doubt, but I think I could do without &quot;clobs&quot;, &quot;sexprs&quot;, and &quot;symbols&quot; at this level of representation, and it might actually be better if I do. Am I missing something?