New parameter value binary format

[manuelma]

At the moment we store values in the database as BLOB, but those BLOBs are just 'binarised' JSON strings, so we don't really exploit the capability. This is for historical reasons: originally, we stored values as TEXT so it made a lot of sense to use JSON. Then, we changed to BLOB but didn't ditch the JSON - to take things slowly. But at some point, we should ditch the JSON and either adopt a known binary standard or develop our own.

[manuelma]

The problem with JSON is efficiency. Currently, we need to convert the bytes from the db to string, and then JSON-parse the string into an object. Ideally we should never do any of that and just keep the bytes. This would require developing a high level interface to access the bytes at specific points to retrieve specific indices in the parameter value. Anyone knows a standard?

[jkiviluo]

In principle I'm really in favor of something like this (and I've written as much into Mopo proposal). We should just do careful research to land on the right approach. Maybe even ask around - e.g. Inti might know something about this.