The JSON representation of wikibase data (and perhaps also the bindings in PHP, JS, etc) should support "derived" values. Examples are:
* ID values expanded to full URIs
* Quantity values normalized to a base value
* Time values normalized to an ISO date
* URLs for sitelinks
* Terms including language fallback metadata
Such derived values should (optionally) be present in:
* API output
* EntityData output
* JSON dumps
It should //not// be present in the internal representation used for storage in the database. Normalization depends on global knowledge (such as statements on properties) that can change, and would invalidate the content of the database if recorded there.
Some use cases:
* ingestion of quantity values for querying needs normalized values (quantity, time, etc)
* full URIs for references to other vocabularies / authorities makes as a full hub in the LOD web (instead of the dead end we Wikidata currently is).
* Lua would have access to normalized versions of the data values, e.g. to create sorted lists
* Gadgets have access to sitelink URLs for linking