JSON response specification

[Roberto De Almeida]

Hi, all.

I would like to propose an informal specification of a JSON
(JavaScript Object Notation) response for DAP servers. The JSON
response combines the DDS and DAS in a single response; optionally,
the client may also request the data values together with the
response.

The rationale behind the JSON response is to simplify the development
of AJAX applications that access the server using Javascript. The JSON
response is valid Javascript and can be evaled by the browser to
return a "dataset object" with variables, attributes and possibly
data. Since AJAX applications are becoming more common I thought it
would be interesting to write a specification that could be shared
between servers and clients.

The current specification is implemented by pydap through a plugin
called ``dap.responses.json`` that can be installed separately. The
current draft of the spec is located at:

    http://pydap.org/responses/json.html#dap-json-spec

The spec is by no means final. I would be happy to hear comments,
critics and suggestions.

More information about JSON can be found here:

    http://json.org

Incidentally, I also wrote DDS and DAS parsers in Javascript:

    http://code.google.com/p/jsdap/

My plan was to write a full DAP client in Javascript, but I gave up
when I started writing the XDR decoder. :)

Thanks,
Roberto