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Issue Spec PR Start Date: 2023-12-14 Authors: Compatibility:
  • [V] Backwards-compatible
  • Forwards-compatible

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Summary

Proposes to use kind: PascalCaseVariantName convention to standardize how enum variants are differentiated in YAML / JSON serialization format.

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Motivation

Currently, the spec does not specify how enum variants must be differentiated between when ODF structures are serialized in YAML / JSON form. This part was left to implementations and Kamu just ended up using kind: camelCaseVariantName.

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Reference-level explanation

The proposal is to use internally-tagged representation: 
enumProperty:
  kind: PascalCaseVariantName
  foo: bar
The internal tagging provides the most concise representation, while remaining non-ambiguous. The slight drawback is that it gives kind property a special function, and we should be mindful of name conflicts. Using the PascalCase for variant names makes names appear identical in YAML / JSON to how they appear in ODF schemas. While PascalCase is the representation that should be used by all implementations when outputting YAML/JSON, in the interest of being more forgiving to human input implementations should also tolerate camelCase and lowercase names when reading YAML/JSON metadata. Same rules should apply to string enums. For example a property with schema such as: 
{
  "type": "string",
  "enumName": "SourceOrdering",
  "enum": [
    "ByEventTime",
    "ByName"
  ]
}
When serialized to YAML should output ByEventTime, and be able to deserialize from ByEventTime, byEventTime, and byeventtime.

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Compatibility

This change is backwards compatible as all existing DatasetSnapshots that exist in YAML format and use camelCase naming will still be accepted under the new scheme.

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Drawbacks

N/A

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Alternatives

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Prior art

N/A

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Unresolved questions

N/A

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Future possibilities

N/A
Last modified on March 16, 2026