BCSV
[bee · sii · es · vii]
| Stands for: | |
|---|---|
| B | Better |
| C | Comma |
| S | Separated |
| V | Values |
BCSV is an effective format for data interchange.
Main Characteristics
BCSV was designed from the very start to have the following characteristics:
Tabular
BCSV has a tabular / table format of rows and columns. As a result it is "schema-full" format
Clear Data
The only data type supported are strings. These are all Base64 encoded with UTF-8 encoding.
Self Describing
The header is always the first row in a BCSV file which intuitively describes the content of the document.
Lightweight
BCSV are plain text files. These may be compressed to save space or bandwidth. Compression is part of the specification.
Lossless
Converting data to and from BCSV always returns the original data even for binary values (i.e. images)
Efficient
The simple format allows large files to be splitted in chunks and parsed separately. This allows cheaper or low-spec machines to be used in efficient manner.
No Learning Curve
Keeping the specification simple allows anyone to be a BCSV expert in less than 5 minutes.
Programmer Friendly
The algorythm for encoding/decoding is so simple that in most programming languages no additional libraries are required for basic usage.