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Despite its popularity as a data interchange format, JSON still lacks a commonly accepted data model and is defined only syntactically. Because of its simplicity, it may appear that the textual representation already conveys all the needed meaning; however, in the context of global Internet-centric applications, where many different technologies interact, the lack of defined semantics can lead to serious interoperability issues.

In this paper we explicitly attack this problem: we look at the most common JSON interpretations and examine the potential ambiguities of JSON, and then we introduce Jsonya/dm — a strictly defined, language-neutral data model for JSON, which allows consistent interpretation of JSON regardless of the specific environment. To evaluate it, we examine 63 existing JSON libraries for 10 programming languages; the analysis confirms that Jsonya/dm both reflects the established conventions and addresses the potential incompatibilities between these libraries.

Miloslav Sredkov

Miloslav Sredkov is a PhD student in the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Sofia University and also a Technology Consultant at Astea Solutions AD positioned in Sofia, Bulgaria.

His research is on computational and data models related to JSON in the context of pure functional programming languages and efficient data structures for their representation. At Astea his work is mainly on Internet-centric applications for authoring and distribution of rich interactive content. He also participates in the preparation of high-school and university students for programming competitions in the ACM and IOI styles, and he is a frequent problem setter for such contests.