JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format used by many Web APIs. JSON is built on two primary structures: a key-value list and an ordered list of values. Most data representations, such as XML, can be easily converted to JSON. As the native language of most Internet clients is JavaScript, returning a JSON response to a Web API call requires no data transformation prior to working with the returned data. For further reading, see Wikipedia or the JSON specification.
YAML (Yet Another Markup Language or more recently referred to as YAML Ain't Markup Language) is a human readable data serialization format. The data format draws many concepts from XML, but has leaner structure, using textual indentation to denote hierarchical relationships, which aid its readability. Note that JSON is a subset of YAML 1.2. The most notable Web API to support YAML is Wikipedia. See Wikipedia or the YAML specification for more information.
RDF (Resource Description Framework) provides a common framework for representing information about resources on the Web. RDF uses the notion of making statements about a resource in the form of subject-predicate-object expressions, known as triples in RDF terminology. The XML syntax for RDF is used by a variety of semantic Web APIs such as Google Social Graph and Calais, as well as other applications where the triples notion makes sense. For more information, go to Wikipedia or RDF according to W3C specifications and Mozilla's description.
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