[jira] [Assigned] (ARROW-8952) [C++] Support for textual, JSON schema representation

["Todd Farmer (Jira)" <ji...@apache.org>]

     [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ARROW-8952?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:all-tabpanel ]

Todd Farmer reassigned ARROW-8952:
----------------------------------

    Assignee:     (was: Christian Hudon)

> [C++] Support for textual, JSON schema representation
> -----------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: ARROW-8952
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ARROW-8952
>             Project: Apache Arrow
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: C++
>            Reporter: Christian Hudon
>            Priority: Major
>              Labels: Schema, pull-request-available
>          Time Spent: 2h 50m
>  Remaining Estimate: 0h
>
> Currently, Arrow has no textual representation for its schema that could serve the same purposes as JSON-Schema for JSON, the .proto files for Protobuf, etc. This issue is about adding such a text representation for an Arrow schema, to fill the same use cases that these textual representations fill for other data serialization formats.
> The requirements for a text schema representation:
>  * Data, not code (can be used without being run directly, unlike e.g. calls to the Python API to create a Schema object)
>  * Readable by people who are experts in their field (e.g. data scientists, etc.) and are however _not_ Arrow experts, without needing the doc side by side
>  * Small modifications possible with no or light usage of the doc (e.g. changing a field from int32 to int64)
>  * Writing new schemas from scratch possible with the doc for non-Arrow experts
>  * Not tied to a particular version of Arrow & compatible between Arrow versions
> And from a software engineering point of view, it would be very desirable for the implementation to not add another library dependency for Arrow (which already has many).
> After discussion on the mailing list, the JSON representation for Flatbuffers data seemed the best candidate. It is a format supported by the Flatbuffers projects for serializing Flatbuffers assets in a human-readable format, for inclusion under source-control. And there is already functionality in Arrow to convert Schema objects to a Flatbuffers representation. This would meet all the requirements above, while requiring only a small amount of new Arrow code to implement.
> This issue will add functions Arrow to load and save a textual, JSON representation of an Arrow schema, by first converting it to a FlatBuffers object, and then using the Flatbuffers functionality to save/load such objects as JSON.



--
This message was sent by Atlassian Jira
(v8.20.10#820010)