Opinion on supporting "union" types

Hi,

We have an open issue [1] on whether to support “union” types on columns. For example, should we enable metadata to contain:

  "datatype": [ "integer", { "base": "string", "format": "(NE|NP|SUPP)" } ]

to enable a column to contain either integers or the special strings “NE”, “NP” or “SUPP”. We have one really well documented example of why this would be useful [2] but would be happier with introducing this additional complexity if we had more examples where this would be useful.

We need to make a decision before the next round of document releases (early June).

Please tell us what you think either here on the list or on the Github issue.

Thanks,

Jeni

[1] https://github.com/w3c/csvw/issues/223
[2] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-csv-wg-comments/2015Apr/0002.html
--  
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com/

Received on Sunday, 3 May 2015 09:47:10 UTC