I am trying to separate data from code in order to reduce bugs, development time and sanity. So basically what I want is a file that describes an event system. It describes WHAT happens when WHAT happens, basically. Now, I need a file format to store this so I can parse it and apply it later in the code.
To that end, I am searching for good data storage formats. The requirements that I have are:
- Human readable (I am going to write this, obviously)
- Validation support (e.g. schemas)
- Good FREE tool support for validating the files (I am NOT going to receive this data dynamically, so I DON'T need a library)
- Easy to use
- Must be support for parsing and reading from VBA (for use inside Access)
- Would be nice if there is a good IDE/Editor for writing the file format
So I've been looking some, and the formats I know are: XML, JSON and YAML.
XML is big, fast and difficult to use.
I can't seem to find any good tools for JSON. All I find are libraries, which are mostly useless to me. I am not planning on receiving data dynamically, so I don't want to write code to verify it. I just want a good tool.
YAML gives almost zero results when looking for tools.
I may relent on the library bit if it's easy to implement and its output rich (I don't need something that just says that the file doesn't pass validation), but I'd rather not code it.
So that's why I thought I'd borrow some experience of some of the members here to validate my options. Keep in mind, this isn't a commercial project, so I don't intend to pay for simple tools that works with very simple file formats.
I probably don't need to say this, but I'll mention it anyway. The tools must work under Windows. Not Linux. Not Mac OS. Web is fine.