
Protocol Buffers alternatives
Protocol Buffers are a way of encoding structured data in an efficient yet extensible format. It is faster to parse and has an intuitive interface. It finds uses in both performance-critical systems and systems better suited to humans to read and edit. It is a language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible way of serializing structured data that provides a simple memory-efficient way of exchanging data between different systems.
Protocol Buffers can be used to encode either a wire format or an internal format (the “message definition”) of a data structure. The choice of internal vs. external format is independent of the choice to use it for serializing over the wire. When you’re programming an application where there’s a lot of data or many different types of data, it’s really easy to run into “version hell.” It helps when you need to change some data, and the programs that are using the data have to be changed in a compatible way. Overall it’s the best serialization format.














