Data interchange formats, such as DIF and LDAP, allowed for interoperability between various computer programs in the 1980s and 1990s. LDIF became a standard for importing and exporting directory records, while ADIF was developed for amateur radio software. JSON is a lightweight data interchange format based on JavaScript.
The first instance of a data interchange format was released in the early 1980s, when a software company shipped the specifications in copies of its popular spreadsheet program and simultaneously published them in a leading informatics. Data Information Format (DIF) was initially used as a text file format for import/export transfer of individual spreadsheet files between various spreadsheet programs from many platforms. A similar interchange format was released, called LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) Data Interchange Format, in the 1990s, and this could not only transfer data in text form, but also directory data in text form and allowed changes of directory data.
Businesses were starting to computerize their administrative record and functions at a great rate around this time, and what this data interchange format allowed for was interoperability when files were saved in the DIF format; therefore, billing, scheduling, and inventory programs might all be using the same data files. Since the data exchange format was independent of any type of computer platform or operating system, computer assisted design (CAD) programs, database management programs, and other types of programs started using it.
LDAP Data Interchange Format, with its LDIF components, allowed directory records to be updated, added, modified, deleted, and renamed as a plain text record set. It has become a standard promoted by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for importing and exporting between directory servers. Windows modified the command line somewhat and renamed it LDIFDE, which could import directory objects into Active Directory domain servers; and from this data, the search and list functions could be used by system administrators. An open source Java application enabled cross-platform editing of files stored in the LDIF file format.
Programmers of other types of software programs noticed the interoperability and started developing their own data interchange formats. Several developers of amateur radio software programs have agreed on a standard for transferring data between amateur radio software programs which has come to be known as the Amateur Data Interchange Format (ADIF). They promptly started teaching their users how to save in ADIF format to exchange information between software packages.
A lightweight data interchange format was developed from JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), generally considered easy to read and write for beginners. Based on a subset of the JavaScript programming language, it was completely language-independent, but had similar conventions to the C family of programming languages, and was built on only two structures. It collected name/value pairs for objects, records, hashtables, directories, structs, associative arrays, and keyed lists, and also had a list of values sorted into arrays, vectors, lists, or sequences.
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