8.4 Summary
This chapter’s projects have shown examples of the following features of a data acquisition application:
Using the Pydantic module for crisp, complete definitions
Using JSON Schema to create an exportable language-independent definition that anyone can use
Creating test scenarios to use the formal schema definition
Having formalized schema definitions permits recording additional details about the data processing applications and the transformations applied to the data.
The docstrings for the class definitions become the descriptions in the schema. This permits writing details on data provenance and transformation that are exposed to all users of the data.
The JSON Schema standard permits recording examples of values. The Pydantic package has ways to include this metadata in field definitions, and class configuration objects. This can be helpful when explaining odd or unusual data encodings.
Further, for text fields, JSONSchema permits including a format attribute...