Unifying Business, Data, and Code

Chapter 8. The Two Fundamental Operations of Schemas

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein

In Chapter 5, you learned the basics of JSON Schema and saw a practical way to put it to use: generating web forms.

Schemas are powerful declarative artifacts that can elegantly solve a wide range of problems in your data-centric innovation journey, often requiring a tiny fraction of the code you would have to write otherwise. However, these opportunities are easy to miss unless you have a good grasp on how to break down problems in terms of what schemas can do for you.

In Chapter 4, we discussed that data alone does not make a well-designed data product. It must be complemented with three other equally important facets: context, structure, and meaning. Here, we will explore the two fundamental operations you can perform using JSON Schema: data validation and annotation extraction (see Figure 8-1), and how they relate to these four facets.

This chapter dives deep into these two fundamental operations and presents examples you can use as inspiration for adopting schemas in your projects, or increasing the amount of value you already get from them.

Figure 8-1. A JSON Schema is typically combined with a JSON instance to produce validation results, annotation results, or both.

Note

Like Chapters 2 and 5, this chapter is aimed ...