http://yaml.org/

While JSON is fantastic at low-overhead data exchange, it does come with some subtle drawbacks. In short, you will more than likely see an impedance-mismatch between JSON and Java since JSON assumes a loosely-typed environment (read: no built-in type info), whereas Java is much less forgiving.

(using JSONObject from http://www.json.org/java/index.html)

JSONObject obj = new JSONObject(”{’foo’:69.0,’bar’:'42′}”);
int x = obj.get(”foo”); //fail: returns Double
int y = obj.get(”bar”); //fail: returns String

Typically this isn’t a problem with explicit serialization. If you plan on using reflection to serialize Java objects, you’ll need to perform some type-checking, and call the appropriate getXYZ() methods rather than blindly get()-ing your data.

Another small issue is how JSON has no provision for binary data. Much like with XML, the best solution is to base64 encode any such data since JSON typically is delivered as ASCII or UTF-8.

Nice summary and introduction, keep up the good work.