Store Data as JSON

Date: March 2023

Status: Accepted

Context

We need to store structured data that can be viewed and edited in wiki pages.

Semantic MediaWiki stores the data in wikitext and Wikibase stores the data in JSON.

Decision

Store the data in JSON.

Consequences

Pros:

• All values can be edited, since they cannot be generated by wikitext. We can thus allow editing of query results.
• JSON is easier to parse and generate than wikitext.
• We can accurately see historical values in the revision history.

Cons:

• No out-of-the-box user scripting. Users cannot use wikitext templates, functions, etc. to generate values.