Concept

Comparison of data-serialization formats

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Protocol Buffers

Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) is a free and open-source cross-platform data format used to serialize structured data. It is useful in developing programs that communicate with each other over a network or for storing data. The method involves an interface description language that describes the structure of some data and a program that generates source code from that description for generating or parsing a stream of bytes that represents the structured data.

File format

A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a . It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free. Some file formats are designed for very particular types of data: PNG files, for example, store bitmapped using lossless data compression. Other file formats, however, are designed for storage of several different types of data: the Ogg format can act as a container for different types of multimedia including any combination of audio and video, with or without text (such as subtitles), and metadata.

ASN.1

Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) is a standard interface description language for defining data structures that can be serialized and deserialized in a cross-platform way. It is broadly used in telecommunications and computer networking, and especially in cryptography. Protocol developers define data structures in ASN.1 modules, which are generally a section of a broader standards document written in the ASN.1 language. The advantage is that the ASN.1 description of the data encoding is independent of a particular computer or programming language.

JSON

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ˈdʒeɪsən; also ˈdʒeɪˌsɒn) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other serializable values). It is a common data format with diverse uses in electronic data interchange, including that of web applications with servers. JSON is a language-independent data format. It was derived from JavaScript, but many modern programming languages include code to generate and parse JSON-format data.

Serialization

In computing, serialization (or serialisation) is the process of translating a data structure or object state into a format that can be stored (e.g. in secondary storage devices, data buffers in primary storage devices) or transmitted (e.g. data streams over computer networks) and reconstructed later (possibly in a different computer environment). When the resulting series of bits is reread according to the serialization format, it can be used to create a semantically identical clone of the original object.

YAML

YAML ('jæməl) (see ) is a human-readable data-serialization language. It is commonly used for s and in applications where data is being stored or transmitted. YAML targets many of the same communications applications as Extensible Markup Language (XML) but has a minimal syntax which intentionally differs from Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). It uses both Python-style indentation to indicate nesting, and a more compact format that uses for lists and for maps but forbids tab characters to use as indentation thus only some JSON files are valid YAML 1.

XML

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. The World Wide Web Consortium's XML 1.0 Specification of 1998 and several other related specifications—all of them free open standards—define XML. The design goals of XML emphasize simplicity, generality, and usability across the Internet.

Standard Generalized Markup Language

The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML; ISO 8879:1986) is a standard for defining generalized markup languages for documents. ISO 8879 Annex A.1 states that generalized markup is "based on two postulates": Declarative: Markup should describe a document's structure and other attributes rather than specify the processing that needs to be performed, because it is less likely to conflict with future developments. Rigorous: In order to allow markup to take advantage of the techniques available for processing, markup should rigorously define objects like programs and databases.