Technical Summary
The Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR, RFC 7049) is a data
format whose design goals include the possibility of extremely small
code size, fairly small message size, and extensibility without the
need for version negotiation.
The present document makes use of this extensibility to define a
number of CBOR tags for typed arrays of numeric data, as well as two
additional tags for multi-dimensional and homogeneous arrays. It is
intended as the reference document for the IANA registration of the
CBOR tags defined.
Working Group Summary
There were two point that could be considered as a controversy.
The first if there should be a rule about using big endian or little
endian in the case of deterministic encoding. The WG consensus result
was no, but that may not reflect the view of all individuals in the
working group.
Secondly, regarding tag 68 (Uint8ClampedArray):
on one side, it was noted that such a tag indicates a property of the
processing more than just the item's encoding. On the other side, it was
noted that that allows to identify more precisely what the data type
is, which is a desirable feature of CBOR, and that this does not
differ from other tags such as MIME. In general, this brings up the
point of using CBOR tags to identify types of objects in protocols
that exists elsewhere in an object oriented system, such as in other
standards or other implementations (JavaScript/ES6 for
“Uint8ClampedArray”) rather than in JSON. The WG consensus was
towards this being a desirable feature, and the tag was kept in the
document.
Another more general note, there exist different perception of
usefulness of some of the concepts in the document (such as homogenous
arrays).
Document Quality
There is no existing implementations of the specifications, as far as
I can tell. The document went through several thorough reviews during
the time as working group document, including broader community
reviews. No expert review was requested, although an expert review was
done during early registration of IANA parameters defined in this
document.
Personnel
Francesca Palombini is the Document Shepherd.
Alexey Melnikov is the Responsible Area Director.