Data serialization

This section provides a quick primer on the three main data serialization options: XML, JSON, and Google Protocol Buffers (Protobuf). It also provides benchmarking on serialization/deserialization on these and other (less used) formats.

XML

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a standard for defining a serializable format, which allows a producer to encode data in a text format, without having to define explicit contracts with all consumers. It is derived from Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), and is language-independent.

The following XML snippet describes a hotel object:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 
<root> 
   <city>New York</city> 
   &lt...