Iglu Core

Iglu is designed to be not dependent on any particular programming language or platform. But there's growing set of applications beside clients and registries using different concepts originated from Iglu. To have consistent data structures and behavior among different applications, we're developing Iglu core libraries for different languages.

Basic data structures

All languages have their own unique features and particular Iglu Core implementation may or may not use these features. One common rule for all Iglu core implementations is to minimize dependencies. Ideally Iglu core should have no external dependencies. Another rule is to implement the required basic data structures (in form of classes, structs, ADTs or any other appropriate form) and functions.

SchemaKey

This data structure contains information about Self-describing datum, such as Snowplow unstructured event or context.

It also should have related parse functions, which can parse SchemaKey from most common representation - Iglu URI (string with form of iglu:com.acme/someschema/format/1-0-0) and Iglu path (same, but without iglu: protocol part). Reverse asString function required as well.

This also can include appropriate regular expressions to extract and validate schema key. Function for parsing SchemaKey from JSON Schemas is optional if there's no default JSON library like in JavaScript, but can be included within some interface.

More information can be found in Self-describing JSON Schemas and Self-describing JSONs wiki pages.

SchemaMap

This is almost isomorphic entity to SchemaKey, which also contains same information: vendor, name, format and version. But unlike SchemaKey it supposed to be attached only to Schemas instead of datums. In schemas same information usually has different representation and also version is always full opposed to datum's possibly partial.

SchemaVer

This is a part of SchemaKey and SchemaMap with information about semantic Schema version, basically triplet of MODEL, REVISION, ADDITION.

Like, SchemaKey it should contain parse function with regular expressions as well as asString method.

It can either full (e.g. 1-2-0) or partial (e.g. 1-?-?) suited for schema inference.

More information can be found in dedicated wiki page: SchemaVer.

SchemaCriterion

Last core data structure is SchemaCriterion which is a default way to filter Self-describing entities. Basically it represent SchemaKey divided into six parts, where last three (MODEL, REVISION, ADDITION) can be unfilled, thus one can match all entities regardless parts which remain unfilled.

SchemaCriterion also must contain regular expression, parse and asString (unfilled parts replaced with asterisks) functions. One other required function is matches which accepts SchemaCriterion and SchemaKey and returning boolean value indicating if key was matched. Bear in mind that criterions matching versions like .../*-1-* or .../*-*-0 are absolutely valid, they're useful if want to match all initial Schemas.

Implementations

Currently we have only Scala Iglu Core which can be considered as reference implementation. Among described above data structures it includes type classes and container classes to improve type-safety. These type classes and containers are completely optional in other implementations.