Consider the following set of data in JSON format that is going to be transmitted from the server to the clients browser.
records: [
{ studid: 0, fname: 'christian', lname: 'bosch', num: '12345678' },
{ studid: 1, fname: 'christian1', lname: 'bosch1', num: '123456781' },
{ studid: 2, fname: 'christian2', lname: 'bosch2', num: '123456782' }
]
the example above is simple and structured in JSON format..very readable and maintainable. However, when the record count reaches 1000, imagine how many "studid", "fname", "lname", "num" are going to be repeated. As expected it will consume some resources (bandwidth, memory, etc).
I think we can save some resources by rewriting the format of data into
records: [
[0, 'christian', 'bosch', '12345678' ],
[1, 'christian1', 'bosch1', '123456781' ],
[2, 'christian2', 'bosch2', '123456782' ]
]
Now, it looks less and for sure it will save a lot (or maybe some) resources.
The rewritten format may look odd for a programmer, but remember that most of the time it will not be the programmer whose going to deal with it(the data) but rather the programmer's script.
To make it better all it needs is a definition of column names. Like
coldef: {studid: 0, fname: 1, lname: 2, num: 3}
accessing the records in this way
records[index][coldef.studid]
records[index][coldef.fname]
I hope this will become an important contribution.