Amazon open-sources Ion – a binary and text interchangable, typed JSON-superset
Finally! I've had to live the JSON nightmare since I left Amazon.<p>Some of the benefits over JSON:<p>* Real date type<p>* Real binary type - no need to base64 encode<p>* Real decimal type - invaluable when working with currency<p>* Annotations - You can tag an Ion field in a map with an annotation that says, e.g. its compression ("csv", "snappy") or its serialized type ('com.example.Foo').<p>* Text and binary format<p>* Symbol tables - this is like automated jsonpack.<p>* It's self-describing - meaning, unlike Avro, you don't need the schema ahead of time to read or write the data.