Jul 8, 2008 Posted by Gubbi on Jul 8, 2008 | 3 comments

Protocol Buffers And JSON, Part – I

Google released Protocol Buffers as an open source project today. It used to be an internal tool used by Google for passing serialized objects between applications. But frankly, reading through the introduction I don’t see what problem it tries to tackle that JSON can’t. I seriously doubt if PB is faster than JSON. Also, JSON is more generic and flexible than PB. Easier too. Perhaps PB as a project predates JSON. I see several having the same reactions as mine.

I am going to dig into documentations and discussions to make sense of the pros and cons of PB viz-a-viz JSON.

Tags: ProtocolBuffers, JSON, PB, Google

3 Responses to “Protocol Buffers And JSON, Part – I”

1. Bookmarks about Json says:

   September 17, 2008 at 1:55 pm

   [...] – bookmarked by 6 members originally found by Alistair1990 on 2008-09-13 Protocol Buffers And JSON, Part – I http://blogs.vinuth.com/la-gubya/2008/07/protocol-buffers-and-json-part-i/ – bookmarked by 5 [...]
2. Jan-Erik says:

   February 25, 2009 at 6:12 am

   Well most importantly PB has support for different versions of the objects you try to (de)serialize which JSON doesn't offer. This mechanism becomes very impoartant when you have to deal in an entrprise environment where the components can be using different versions of the domain objects.
3. Gubbi says:

   February 25, 2009 at 7:40 am

   Hmm.

   At the same time, there is also nothing in JSON that doesn't “allow”
   handling multiple versions of objects. Isn't it?

   Thanks for stopping by and discussing.