Re: [emergency-cap] CAP Issue 23 - Specify JSON serialization

[Art Botterell <acb@incident.com>]

You're right, Darrell... we crossed this Rubicon several years ago when we adopted the ASN.1 encoding alternative.  As a result, under the strictest possible interpretation your system isn't really "100%" unless it supports ASN.1 as well as XML.  

However, compliance is ultimately what we say it is... there's a section in the spec for just that topic.  We might want to consider defining both a "compatible" level and a "fully" or "globally compatible" level.  (We might also want to consider partnering with an open-source effort to create a freely-usable library to facilitate conversion among the XML, ASN.1, JSON formats and whatever other encodings may arise for CAP in the future.)

And of course it's important to distinguish between standard-compliance and system interoperability.  Unfortunately the former doesn't guarantee the latter, what with different local profiles and network transport arrangements overlaying the fundamental message format.  One might say that standard compliance is necessary but not sufficient... an essential first step, but not an occasion for declaring the interoperability problem solved!

The good news is that implementing JSON support is generally much simpler, technically, than parsing and marshaling XML (or ASN.1).

- Art


> On Oct 29, 2014, at 02:44, Darrell O'Donnell <darrell.odonnell@continuumloop.com> wrote:
> 
> Perhaps I am raising a discussion here that has already happened but I am concerned.
> 
> If I build a system that is 100% compatible with the new JSON encoding - am I CAP 1.2 compliant? Is there some obligation on the receiving end to accept both JSON and the widespread XML format? I maintain a system (that Jake built incidentally) that is 100% CAP (and CAP-CP) compatible. Am I now on the hook to plan for incoming JSON?
> 
> cheers,
> 
> Darrell
>