DATEX Specification

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Important Notice:

This is a Working Draft of the DATEX Specification. This is document is work in progress and may change at any time. It is not intended to be used for production purposes.

2 Paradigms ​

Every design aspect of DATEX should respect the following design paradigms and constraints:

  1. Interoperability
    1. DATEX should be a superset of JSON. This means that all valid JSON documents should also be valid DATEX script files, and that DATEX should be able to represent all common JSON data types. This is important for interoperability with existing systems and for ease of use in applications that already use JSON.
    2. DATEX should be able to be implemented in a wide range of programming languages and platforms. This means that the core types and features of DATEX should be designed to be easily mapped to the most common programming languages. The goal is to make it easy for developers to use DATEX in their applications without having to learn a new language or framework.
  2. Compact Language Design
    1. The set of core types should be as small as possible, but still be able to represent all common data types. All common primitive data types of the most common programming languages should be supported natively as core types. Complex struct types should be representable as combinations of core types.
    2. Stay as compact as possible and maximise the usefulness of a feature, don't implement features for a narrow use case