Finally! I've had to live the JSON nightmare since I left Amazon.
Some of the benefits over JSON:
* Real date type
* Real binary type - no need to base64 encode
* Real decimal type - invaluable when working with currency
* 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').
* Text and binary format
* Symbol tables - this is like automated jsonpack.
* It's self-describing - meaning, unlike Avro, you don't need the schema ahead of time to read or write the data.
Some of the benefits over JSON:
* Real date type
* Real binary type - no need to base64 encode
* Real decimal type - invaluable when working with currency
* 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').
* Text and binary format
* Symbol tables - this is like automated jsonpack.
* It's self-describing - meaning, unlike Avro, you don't need the schema ahead of time to read or write the data.