Thank you for the fantastic feedback! I updated the list using your feedback. Is there anything else that should be added? /Roger -------------------------------------- JSON is often compared to XML. However, there are significant differences:
-
XML supports comments, JSON does not.
-
XML supports processing instructions, JSON does not.
-
XML provides multiple syntaxes to express things (e.g., attribute values can be delimited by either a single or double quote, attributes
can be in any order), JSON does not have such flexibility.
-
XML child nodes (text, elements, comments, PIs) have order, the key/value pairs in JSON objects are unordered.
-
XML uses canonicalization to convert XML into a standard form. Since ordering doesn't exist in JSON objects, a canonical form for JSON
is problematic: with no canonical order, there's no standard byte stream.
-
XML has namespaces, JSON does not.
-
XML supports mixed content, JSON does not.
-
XML has entities and notations, JSON does not.
-
XML does not have arrays (although they can be simulated), JSON has arrays. JSON objects inside arrays have position, but no name; if
an array is inside an object, then the name could be mapped from the key name for the array member; JSON arrays inside arrays inside an object are somewhat more of a challenge.
-
XML uses different character sets (NCName) for markup than for content, JSON uses the same character set throughout the entire document.
-
XML supports any character encoding scheme, JSON supports exclusively Unicode.
-
XML has pointy brackets, JSON has curly and square ones. |