Motivation¶
We would like to serialize structured data to transmit information over networks to avoid intensive cpu executions and related risks. So, we use a serialization mechanism to enable faster* data transfer of platform independence, data interexchange over heterogeneous distributed systems, and more
syntax = "proto2";
package tutorial;
message Person {
required string name = 1;
required int32 id = 2; optional string email = 3;
enum PhoneType { MOBILE = 0;
HOME = 1; WORK = 2; }
message PhoneNumber {
required string number = 1;
optional PhoneType type = 2 [default = HOME];
}repeated PhoneNumber phones = 4; }Protocol Buffer¶
Created by Google, Protocol Buffers are a binary encoding format of data into efficient and extensible format.
Facts
- Schema declaration for over-the-wire data transfer to/from services. Ensure signals are valid
- Backward Compatible for older datatypes
- New fields could be introduced, and in-between servers need not inspect data
- Validations: required, optional, repeeated keywords
- Ease of Language Interpretability
Json¶
- Javascript Object Notation (JSON) is a minimal format for structuring data.
- Use of Keys and Values
- Built on two structures
- Collection of name/value pairs
- Ordered list of values
- Javascript object is not JSON, and JSON is not a Javascript only object
{"firstName": "John",
"lastName": "Smith", "isAlive": true,
"age": 27,
"address": { "streetAddress": "21 2nd Street", "city": "New York", "state": "NY", "postalCode": "10021-3100"
},
"phoneNumbers": [ {
"type": "home", "number": "212 555-1234" }, {
"type": "office", "number": "646 555-4567" }, {
"type": "mobile", "number": "123 456-7890" }
}
XML¶
eXtensible Markup Language (XML) Tags and Attributes
Compare & Contrast¶
- Protocol Buffer
- Dense and small output, memory saver
- Hard to decode without knowing schema (in the case of security meausres)
- Fast Processing
- JSON
- Human Readible
- Can be parsed without knowing schema in advance
- Somewhat verbose
- Not Doc. Markup Language
- XML
- Human, but verbose, Readible
- Parsed without knowing schema in advance
- Standard for SOAP and other implementations
- Document Markup Language
Other Tools¶
- Apache Thrift
- eProsima Fast Buffers
- SGML