Motivation

• PNDA depends on metadata to be provided in order to organize data storage & processing
• Currently, this metadata must be provided in a specific fixed format - a defined Avro schema
• Not everyone wants to use Avro or incur the overhead of converting data formats on ingest
• Therefore, it would be beneficial to have a mechanism that allows a range of common formats, continuing to mandate that the metadata required by PNDA *is* supplied but not being needlessly restrictive in *how* it's supplied

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