Re: Stream-based processing!?

On Oct 1, 2011, at 12:40 PM, Manu Sporny wrote:

> On 09/28/2011 07:57 AM, Markus Lanthaler wrote:
>> The current spec states that "[JSON-LD] is intended to be easy to parse,
>> efficient to generate, stream-based and document-based processing
>> compatible, and require a very small memory footprint in order to operate."
>> 
>> What is meant with stream-based processing?
> 
> I wanted to ensure that conversion to RDF processing was able to be 
> performed as a one-pass process, without access to the full data 
> structure, by a SAX-like JSON processor. This is important for embedded 
> and low-memory environments. It also ensures that the processors stay 
> lean and simple to implement via a recursive processing algorithm.
> 
> One pass is not possible for some of the other algorithms, such as 
> normalization and framing... but for conversion to RDF, we can still do 
> one-pass. I called this stream-based processing, but perhaps we should 
> re-name it to one-pass processing. What word captures the requirement 
> that conversion to RDF only requires one pass and a very small memory 
> footprint?
> 
> We could also require serializations ensure that @context is listed 
> first. If it isn't listed first, the processor has to save each 
> key-value pair until the @context is processed. This creates a memory 
> and complexity burden for one-pass processors.

I can go along with requiring @context to be listed first in a serialization of JSON. But if we're going to say that, we should also say that @subject (were we going change it to just @iri?) MUST also precede other key/value pairs. @subject is also required to generate triples and should therefore precede any other uses of it. We could then infer that if a key is found which is not @context or @subject, that it represents an unlabeled node.

>> An object has no implied order
>> in JSON and so the @context might be the last element to be parsed. This
>> makes it impossible to do anything with all the other elements parsed
>> before. So how exactly JSON-LD supports stream-based processing and how is
>> it intended to work?
> 
> Does the above answer your question?
> 
> -- manu
> 
> -- 
> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> blog: Standardizing Payment Links - Why Online Tipping has Failed
> http://manu.sporny.org/2011/payment-links/
>

Received on Saturday, 1 October 2011 21:18:14 UTC