The Amazon Ion specification has three parts. A set of data types. A textual notation for values of those types. A binary notation for values of those types.
Amazon Ion is a richly-typed, self-describing, hierarchical data serialization format offering interchangeable binary and text representations. Ion was built to address rapid development, decoupling, and efficiency challenges faced every day while engineering large-scale, service-oriented architectures. Ion has been addressing these challenges within Amazon for nearly a decade, and we believe others will benefit as well.