* YAML, with magical keywords that turn data into conditions/commands * template language for the YAML in places when that isn't enough * ....Python, because you need to eventually write stuff that ingests the above either way .... ansible is great isn't it?"
... and for some reason others decide "YES THIS IS AWESOME" and we now have a bunch of declarative YAML+template garbage.
> There was a thread here the other day about using Sqlite as an interchange format to REDUCE complexity. Look, I love Sqlite, as an application specific data-store. But much like XML it has a ton of capabilities, which is good for a data-store, but awful for an interchange format with multiple producers/consumers with their own ideas.
It's just a bunch of records put in tables with pretty simple data types. And it's trivial to convert into other formats while being compact and queryable on its own. So as far as formats go, you could do a whole lot worse.