Data Standard / System requirements / Serialisation

Serialisation

The canonical serialisation of BODS data is as a JSON document. Equivalent specifications of JSON are given by IETF RFC 8256 and by ECMA 404. It is RECOMMENDED that publishers:

• Use UTF-8 for maximal interoperability (section 8.1 of RFC 8259);

• Escape characters that might cause problems when ingesting data (for example: &, <).

See Section 9 of the ECMA-404 JSON specification which deals with strings, encoding and escaping.

JSON Lines MAY also be used when creating large files.

Statement order

A JSON BODS file MUST consist of a series of ordered Statement objects within a top-level array.

Specifically, the interestedParty and subject values of a Relationship statement, when they are a recordId value, MUST match the recordId value of at least one other prior Statement in the array.

Alternative tabular form

BODS data MAY also be serialised in tabular form, with each row representing a statement. Columns SHOULD represent statement fields and column titles SHOULD use the relevant relative JSON Pointer from the statement root.

For example, the extract:

[
 {
   "statementId": "e3c07f34-1810-4eed-b845-4d9f4d97f9d5",
   "recordId": "1810-4eed-b845-4d9f4d97f9d5",
   "recordType": "entity",
   "recordDetails": {
     "identifiers": [
       {
         "scheme": "GB-COH",
         "id": "07444723"
       }
     ]
   }
 },
 {
   "statementId":"a2b485be-e3b6-4fd7-8a6a-930e46cf9957",
   "recordId": "e3b6-4fd7-8a6a-930e46cf9957",
   "recordType":"person",
   "recordDetails": {
     "identifiers":[
       {
         "scheme":"MX-RFC",
         "id":"ABC680524P-76"
       }
     ]
   }
 },
 {
   "statementId":"34b479f2-1681-4064-ab51-1e703fbafa",
   "recordId": "1681-4064-ab51-1e703fbafa",
   "recordType":"relationship"
 }
]

may be serialised in a table as:

statementId	recordId	recordType	recordDetails/identifiers/0/scheme	recordDetails/identifiers/0/id
e3c07f34-1810-4eed-b845-4d9f4d97f9d5	1810-4eed-b845-4d9f4d97f9d5	entity	GB-COH	07444723
a2b485be-e3b6-4fd7-8a6a-930e46cf9957	e3b6-4fd7-8a6a-930e46cf9957	person	MX-RFC	ABC680524P-76
34b479f2-1681-4064-ab51-1e703fbafa	1681-4064-ab51-1e703fbafa	relationship

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