Comparison of data-serialization formats

Last updated December 16, 2024

This is a comparison of data serialization formats , various ways to convert complex objects to sequences of bits. It does not include markup languages used exclusively as document file formats.

Overview

Name	Creator-maintainer	Based on	Standardized?^{[ definition needed ]}	Specification	Binary?	Human-readable?	Supports references?^e	Schema-IDL?	Standard APIs	Supports zero-copy operations
Apache Arrow	Apache Software Foundation	—	De facto	Arrow Columnar Format	Yes	No	Yes	Built-in	C, C++, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, Julia, Matlab, Python, R, Ruby, Rust, Swift	Yes
Apache Avro	Apache Software Foundation	—	No	Apache Avro™ Specification	Yes	Partial^g	—	Built-in	C, C#, C++, Java, PHP, Python, Ruby	—
Apache Parquet	Apache Software Foundation	—	No	Apache Parquet	Yes	No	No	—	Java, Python, C++	No
Apache Thrift	Facebook (creator) Apache (maintainer)	—	No	Original whitepaper	Yes	Partial^c	No	Built-in	C++, Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, Erlang, Perl, Haskell, C#, Cocoa, JavaScript, Node.js, Smalltalk, OCaml, Delphi and other languages^[1]	—
ASN.1	ISO, IEC, ITU-T	—	Yes	ISO/IEC 8824 / ITU-T X.680 (syntax) and ISO/IEC 8825 / ITU-T X.690 (encoding rules) series. X.680, X.681, and X.683 define syntax and semantics.	BER, DER, PER, OER, or custom via ECN	XER, JER, GSER, or custom via ECN	Yes^f	Built-in	—	OER
Bencode	Bram Cohen (creator) BitTorrent, Inc. (maintainer)	—	De facto as BEP	Part of BitTorrent protocol specification	Except numbers and delimiters, being ASCII	No	No	No	No	No
BSON	MongoDB	JSON	No	BSON Specification	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Cap'n Proto	Kenton Varda	—	No	Cap'n Proto Encoding Spec	Yes	Partial^h	No	Yes	No	Yes
CBOR	Carsten Bormann, P. Hoffman	MessagePack ^[2]	Yes	RFC 8949	Yes	No	Yes, through tagging	CDDL	FIDO2	No
Comma-separated values (CSV)	RFC author: Yakov Shafranovich	—	Myriad informal variants	RFC 4180 (among others)	No	Yes	No	No	No	No
Common Data Representation (CDR)	Object Management Group	—	Yes	General Inter-ORB Protocol	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Ada, C, C++, Java, Cobol, Lisp, Python, Ruby, Smalltalk	—
D-Bus Message Protocol	freedesktop.org	—	Yes	D-Bus Specification	Yes	No	No	Partial (Signature strings)	Yes	—
Efficient XML Interchange (EXI)	W3C	XML, Efficient XML	Yes	Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Format 1.0	Yes	XML	XPointer, XPath	XML Schema	DOM, SAX, StAX, XQuery, XPath	—
Extensible Data Notation (edn)	Rich Hickey / Clojure community	Clojure	Yes	Official edn spec	No	Yes	No	No	Clojure, Ruby, Go, C++, Javascript, Java, CLR, ObjC, Python^[3]	No
FlatBuffers	Google	—	No	Flatbuffers GitHub	Yes	Apache Arrow	Partial (internal to the buffer)	Yes	C++, Java, C#, Go, Python, Rust, JavaScript, PHP, C, Dart, Lua, TypeScript	Yes
Fast Infoset	ISO, IEC, ITU-T	XML	Yes	ITU-T X.891 and ISO/IEC 24824-1:2007	Yes	No	XPointer, XPath	XML schema	DOM, SAX, XQuery, XPath	—
FHIR	Health Level 7	REST basics	Yes	Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Hapi for FHIR^[4] JSON, XML, Turtle	No
Ion	Amazon	JSON	No	The Amazon Ion Specification	Yes	Yes	No	Ion schema	C, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, Python, Rust	—
Java serialization	Oracle Corporation	—	Yes	Java Object Serialization	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	—
JSON	Douglas Crockford	JavaScript syntax	Yes	STD 90/RFC 8259 (ancillary: RFC 6901, RFC 6902), ECMA-404, ISO/IEC 21778:2017	No, but see BSON, Smile, UBJSON	Yes	JSON Pointer (RFC 6901), or alternately, JSONPath, JPath, JSPON, json:select(); and JSON-LD	Partial (JSON Schema Proposal, ASN.1 with JER, Kwalify Archived 2021-08-12 at the Wayback Machine , Rx, JSON-LD	Partial (Clarinet, JSONQuery / RQL, JSONPath), JSON-LD	No
MessagePack	Sadayuki Furuhashi	JSON (loosely)	No	MessagePack format specification	Yes	No	No	No	No	Yes
Netstrings	Dan Bernstein	—	No	netstrings.txt	Except ASCII delimiters	Yes	No	No	No	Yes
OGDL	Rolf Veen	?	No	Specification	Binary specification	Yes	Path specification	Schema WD		—
OPC-UA Binary	OPC Foundation	—	No	opcfoundation.org	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	—
OpenDDL	Eric Lengyel	C, PHP	No	OpenDDL.org	No	Yes	Yes	No	OpenDDL library	—
PHP serialization format	PHP Group	—	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	—
Pickle (Python)	Guido van Rossum	Python	De facto as PEPs	PEP 3154 – Pickle protocol version 4	Yes	No	Yes^[5]	No	Yes	No
Property list	NeXT (creator) Apple (maintainer)	?	Partial	Public DTD for XML format	Yes^a	Yes^b	No	?	Cocoa, CoreFoundation, OpenStep, GnuStep	No
Protocol Buffers (protobuf)	Google	—	No	Developer Guide: Encoding, proto2 specification, and proto3 specification	Yes	Yes^d	No	Built-in	C++, Java, C#, Python, Go, Ruby, Objective-C, C, Dart, Perl, PHP, R, Rust, Scala, Swift, Julia, Erlang, D, Haskell, ActionScript, Delphi, Elixir, Elm, Erlang, GopherJS, Haskell, Haxe, JavaScript, Kotlin, Lua, Matlab, Mercurt, OCaml, Prolog, Solidity, Typescript, Vala, Visual Basic	No
S-expressions	John McCarthy (original) Ron Rivest (internet draft)	Lisp, Netstrings	Largely de facto	"S-Expressions" Archived 2013-10-07 at the Wayback Machine Internet Draft	Yes, canonical representation	Yes, advanced transport representation	No	No		—
Smile	Tatu Saloranta	JSON	No	Smile Format Specification	Yes	No	Yes	Partial (JSON Schema Proposal, other JSON schemas/IDLs)	Partial (via JSON APIs implemented with Smile backend, on Jackson, Python)	—
SOAP	W3C	XML	Yes	W3C Recommendations: SOAP/1.1 SOAP/1.2	Partial ( Efficient XML Interchange , Binary XML , Fast Infoset , MTOM, XSD base64 data)	Yes	Built-in id/ref, XPointer, XPath	WSDL, XML schema	DOM, SAX, XQuery, XPath	—
Structured Data eXchange Formats	Max Wildgrube	—	Yes	RFC 3072	Yes	No	No	No		—
UBJSON	The Buzz Media, LLC	JSON, BSON	No	ubjson.org	Yes	No	No	No	No	—
eXternal Data Representation (XDR)	Sun Microsystems (creator) IETF (maintainer)	—	Yes	STD 67/RFC 4506	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	—
XML	W3C	SGML	Yes	W3C Recommendations: 1.0 (Fifth Edition) 1.1 (Second Edition)	Partial ( Efficient XML Interchange , Binary XML , Fast Infoset , XSD base64 data)	Yes	XPointer, XPath	XML schema, RELAX NG	DOM, SAX, XQuery, XPath	—
XML-RPC	Dave Winer ^[6]	XML	No	XML-RPC Specification	No	Yes	No	No	No	No
YAML	Clark Evans, Ingy döt Net, and Oren Ben-Kiki	C, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, Email, HTML, MIME, URI, XML, SAX, SOAP, JSON ^[7]	No	Version 1.2	No	Yes	Yes	Partial (Kwalify Archived 2021-08-12 at the Wayback Machine , Rx, built-in language type-defs)	No	No
Name	Creator-maintainer	Based on	Standardized?	Specification	Binary?	Human-readable?	Supports references?^e	Schema-IDL?	Standard APIs	Supports zero-copy operations

^ The current default format is binary.
^ The "classic" format is plain text, and an XML format is also supported.
^ Theoretically possible due to abstraction, but no implementation is included.
^ The primary format is binary, but text and JSON formats are available.^[8]^[9]
^ Means that generic tools/libraries know how to encode, decode, and dereference a reference to another piece of data in the same document. A tool may require the IDL file, but no more. Excludes custom, non-standardized referencing techniques.
^ ASN.1 has X.681 (Information Object System), X.682 (Constraints), and X.683 (Parameterization) that allow for the precise specification of open types where the types of values can be identified by integers, by OIDs, etc. OIDs are a standard format for globally unique identifiers, as well as a standard notation ("absolute reference") for referencing a component of a value. For example, PKIX uses such notation in RFC 5912. With such notation (constraints on parameterized types using information object sets), generic ASN.1 tools/libraries can automatically encode/decode/resolve references within a document.
^ The primary format is binary, a json encoder is available.^[10]
^ The primary format is binary, but a text format is available.

Syntax comparison of human-readable formats

Format	Null	Boolean true	Boolean false	Integer	Floating-point	String	Array	Associative array/Object
ASN.1 (XML Encoding Rules)	`<foo />`	`<foo>true</foo>`	`<foo>false</foo>`	`<foo>685230</foo>`	`<foo>6.8523015e+5</foo>`	`<foo>A to Z</foo>`	<SeqOfUnrelatedDatatypes><isMarried>true</isMarried><hobby/><velocity>-42.1e7</velocity><bookname>AtoZ</bookname><bookname>Wesaid,"no".</bookname></SeqOfUnrelatedDatatypes>	An object (the key is a field name): <person><isMarried>true</isMarried><hobby/><height>1.85</height><name>BobPeterson</name></person> A data mapping (the key is a data value): <competition><measurement><name>John</name><height>3.14</height></measurement><measurement><name>Jane</name><height>2.718</height></measurement></competition> ^a
CSV ^b	`null`^a (or an empty element in the row)^a	`1`^a `true`^a	`0`^a `false`^a	`685230` `-685230`^a	`6.8523015e+5`^a	`A to Z` `"We said, ""no""."`	`true,,-42.1e7,"A to Z"`	42,1 A to Z,1,2,3
edn	`nil`	`true`	`false`	`685230` `-685230`	`6.8523015e+5`	`"A to Z"`, `"A \"up to\" Z"`	`[true nil -42.1e7 "A to Z"]`	`{:kw 1, "42" true, "A to Z" [1 2 3]}`
Format	Null	Boolean true	Boolean false	Integer	Floating-point	String	Array	Associative array/Object
Ion	`null` `null.null` `null.bool` `null.int` `null.float` `null.decimal` `null.timestamp` `null.string` `null.symbol` `null.blob` `null.clob` `null.struct` `null.list` `null.sexp`	`true`	`false`	`685230` `-685230` `0xA74AE` `0b111010010101110`	`6.8523015e5`	`"A to Z"` `''' A to Z '''`	[true,null,-42.1e7,"A to Z"]	{'42':true,'A to Z':[1,2,3]}
Netstrings ^c	`0:,`^a `4:null,`^a	`1:1,`^a `4:true,`^a	`1:0,`^a `5:false,`^a	`6:685230,`^a	`9:6.8523e+5,`^a	`6:A to Z,`	`29:4:true,0:,7:-42.1e7,6:A to Z,,`	`41:9:2:42,1:1,,25:6:A to Z,12:1:1,1:2,1:3,,,,`^a
JSON	`null`	`true`	`false`	`685230` `-685230`	`6.8523015e+5`	`"A to Z"`	[true,null,-42.1e7,"A to Z"]	{"42":true,"A to Z":[1,2,3]}
OGDL ^{[ verification needed ]}	`null`^a	`true`^a	`false`^a	`685230`^a	`6.8523015e+5`^a	`"A to Z"` `'A to Z'` `NoSpaces`	true null -42.1e7 "A to Z" `(true, null, -42.1e7, "A to Z")`	42 true "A to Z" 1 2 3 42 true "A to Z", (1, 2, 3)
Format	Null	Boolean true	Boolean false	Integer	Floating-point	String	Array	Associative array/Object
OpenDDL	`ref {null}`	`bool {true}`	`bool {false}`	`int32 {685230}` `int32 {0x74AE}` `int32 {0b111010010101110}`	`float {6.8523015e+5}`	`string {"A to Z"}`	Homogeneous array: int32 {1, 2, 3, 4, 5} Heterogeneous array: array { bool {true} ref {null} float {-42.1e7} string {"A to Z"} }	dict { value (key = "42") {bool {true}} value (key = "A to Z") {int32 {1, 2, 3}} }
PHP serialization format	`N;`	`b:1;`	`b:0;`	`i:685230;` `i:-685230;`	`d:685230.15;`^d `d:INF;` `d:-INF;` `d:NAN;`	`s:6:"A to Z";`	`a:4:{i:0;b:1;i:1;N;i:2;d:-421000000;i:3;s:6:"A to Z";}`	Associative array: `a:2:{i:42;b:1;s:6:"A to Z";a:3:{i:0;i:1;i:1;i:2;i:2;i:3;}}` Object: `O:8:"stdClass":2:{s:4:"John";d:3.14;s:4:"Jane";d:2.718;}`^d
Pickle (Python)	`N.`	`I01\n.`	`I00\n.`	`I685230\n.`	`F685230.15\n.`	`S'A to Z'\n.`	`(lI01\na(laF-421000000.0\naS'A to Z'\na.`	`(dI42\nI01\nsS'A to Z'\n(lI1\naI2\naI3\nas.`
Property list (plain text format)^[11]	—	`<*BY>`	`<*BN>`	`<*I685230>`	`<*R6.8523015e+5>`	`"A to Z"`	`( <BY>, <R-42.1e7>, "A to Z" )`	{ "42" = <BY>; "A to Z" = ( <I1>, <I2>, <I3> ); }
Property list (XML format)^[12]	—	`<true />`	`<false />`	`<integer>685230</integer>`	`<real>6.8523015e+5</real>`	`<string>A to Z</string>`	<array><true/><real>-42.1e7</real><string>AtoZ</string></array>	<dict><key>42</key><true/><key>AtoZ</key><array><integer>1</integer><integer>2</integer><integer>3</integer></array></dict>
Protocol Buffers	—	`true`	`false`	`685230` `-685230`	`20.0855369`	`"A to Z" "sdfff2 \000\001\002\377\376\375" "q\tqq<>q2&\001\377"`	field1: "value1" field1: "value2" field1: "value3 anotherfield { foo: 123 bar: 456 } anotherfield { foo: 222 bar: 333 }	thing1:"blahblah"thing2:18923743thing3:-44thing4{submessage_field1:"foo"submessage_field2:false}enumeratedThing:SomeEnumeratedValuething5:123.456[extensionFieldFoo]:"etc"[extensionFieldThatIsAnEnum]:EnumValue
Format	Null	Boolean true	Boolean false	Integer	Floating-point	String	Array	Associative array/Object
S-expressions	`NIL` `nil`	`T` `#t`^f `true`	`NIL` `#f`^f `false`	`685230`	`6.8523015e+5`	`abc` `"abc"` `#616263#` `3:abc` `{MzphYmM=}` `\|YWJj\|`	`(T NIL -42.1e7 "A to Z")`	`((42 T) ("A to Z" (1 2 3)))`
YAML	`~` `null` `Null` `NULL`^[13]	`y` `Y` `yes` `Yes` `YES` `on` `On` `ON` `true` `True` `TRUE`^[14]	`n` `N` `no` `No` `NO` `off` `Off` `OFF` `false` `False` `FALSE`^[14]	`685230` `+685_230` `-685230` `02472256` `0x_0A_74_AE` `0b1010_0111_0100_1010_1110` `190:20:30`^[15]	`6.8523015e+5` `685.230_15e+03` `685_230.15` `190:20:30.15` `.inf` `-.inf` `.Inf` `.INF` `.NaN` `.nan` `.NAN`^[16]	`A to Z` `"A to Z"` `'A to Z'`	`[y, ~, -42.1e7, "A to Z"]` - y - - -42.1e7 - A to Z	`{"John":3.14, "Jane":2.718}` 42: y A to Z: [1, 2, 3]
XML ^e and SOAP	`<null />`^a	`true`	`false`	`685230`	`6.8523015e+5`	`A to Z`	<item>true</item><itemxsi:nil="true"/><item>-42.1e7</item><item>AtoZ<item>	<map><entrykey="42">true</entry><entrykey="A to Z"><itemval="1"/><itemval="2"/><itemval="3"/></entry></map>
XML-RPC		`<value><boolean>1</boolean></value>`	`<value><boolean>0</boolean></value>`	`<value><int>685230</int></value>`	`<value><double>6.8523015e+5</double></value>`	`<value><string>A to Z</string></value>`	<value><array><data><value><boolean>1</boolean></value><value><double>-42.1e7</double></value><value><string>AtoZ</string></value></data></array></value>	<value><struct><member><name>42</name><value><boolean>1</boolean></value></member><member><name>AtoZ</name><value><array><data><value><int>1</int></value><value><int>2</int></value><value><int>3</int></value></data></array></value></member></struct>

^ Omitted XML elements are commonly decoded by XML data binding tools as NULLs. Shown here is another possible encoding; XML schema does not define an encoding for this datatype.
^ The RFC CSV specification only deals with delimiters, newlines, and quote characters; it does not directly deal with serializing programming data structures.
^ The netstrings specification only deals with nested byte strings; anything else is outside the scope of the specification.
^ PHP will unserialize any floating-point number correctly, but will serialize them to their full decimal expansion. For example, 3.14 will be serialized to 3.140000000000000124344978758017532527446746826171875.
^ XML data bindings and SOAP serialization tools provide type-safe XML serialization of programming data structures into XML. Shown are XML values that can be placed in XML elements and attributes.
^ This syntax is not compatible with the Internet-Draft, but is used by some dialects of Lisp.

Comparison of binary formats

Format	Null	Booleans	Integer	Floating-point	String	Array	Associative array/object
ASN.1 (BER, PER or OER encoding)	NULL type	BOOLEAN: BER: as 1 byte in binary form; PER: as 1 bit; OER: as 1 byte	INTEGER: BER: variable-length big-endian binary representation (up to 2^2¹⁰²⁴ bits); PER Unaligned: a fixed number of bits if the integer type has a finite range; a variable number of bits otherwise; PER Aligned: a fixed number of bits if the integer type has a finite range and the size of the range is less than 65536; a variable number of octets otherwise; OER: 1, 2, or 4 octets (either signed or unsigned) if the integer type has a finite range that fits in that number of octets; a variable number of octets otherwise	REAL: base-10 real values are represented as character strings in ISO 6093 format; binary real values are represented in a binary format that includes the mantissa, the base (2, 8, or 16), and the exponent; the special values NaN, -INF, +INF, and negative zero are also supported	Multiple valid types (VisibleString, PrintableString, GeneralString, UniversalString, UTF8String)	Data specifications SET OF (unordered) and SEQUENCE OF (guaranteed order)	User definable type
BSON	`\x0A` (1 byte)	True: `\x08\x01` False: `\x08\x00` (2 bytes)	int32: 32-bit little-endian 2's complement or int64: 64-bit little-endian 2's complement	Double: little-endian binary64	UTF-8-encoded, preceded by int32-encoded string length in bytes	BSON embedded document with numeric keys	BSON embedded document
Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR)	`\xf6` (1 byte)	True: `\xf5` False: `\xf4` (1 byte)	Small positive/negative `\x00`–`\x17` & `\x20`–`\x37` (1 byte) 8-bit: positive `\x18`, negative `\x38` (+ 1 byte) 16-bit: positive `\x19`, negative `\x39` (+ 2 bytes) 32-bit: positive `\x1A`, negative `\x3A` (+ 4 bytes) 64-bit: positive `\x1B`, negative `\x3B` (+ 8 bytes) Negative x encoded as (−x − 1)	IEEE half/single/double `\xf9`–`\xfb` (+ 2–8 bytes) Decimals and bigfloats (4+ bytes) encoded as `\xc4` tag + 2-item array of integer mantissa & exponent	Length and content (1–9 bytes overhead) Bytestring `\x40`–`\x5f` UTF-8 `\x60`–`\x7f` Indefinite partial strings `\x5f` and `\x7f` stitched together until `\xff`.	Length and items `\x80`–`\x9e` Indefinite list `\x9f` terminated by `\xff` entry.	Length (in pairs) and items `\xa0`–`\xbe` Indefinite map `\xbf` terminated by `\xff` key.
Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) ^[a] (Unpreserved lexical values format)	xsi:nil is not allowed in binary context.	1–2 bit integer interpreted as boolean.	Boolean sign, plus arbitrary length 7-bit octets, parsed until most-significant bit is 0, in little-endian. The schema can set the zero-point to any arbitrary number. Unsigned skips the boolean flag.	Float: integer mantissa and integer exponent. Decimal: boolean sign, integer whole value, integer fractional.	Length prefixed integer-encoded Unicode. Integers may represent enumerations or string table entries instead.	Length prefixed set of items.	Not in protocol.
FlatBuffers	Encoded as absence of field in parent object	True: `\x01` False: `\x00` (1 byte)	Little-endian 2's complement signed and unsigned 8/16/32/64 bits	Floats: little-endian binary32 Doubles: little-endian binary64	UTF-8-encoded, preceded by 32-bit integer length of string in bytes	Vectors of any other type, preceded by 32-bit integer length of number of elements	Tables (schema defined types) or Vectors sorted by key (maps / dictionaries)
Ion ^[18]	`\x0f`^[b]	True: `\x11` False: `\x10`	Positive `\x2x`, negative `\x3x` Zero is always encoded in tag byte. BigInts over 13 bytes (104 bits) have 1+ byte overhead for length	`\x44` (32-bit float) `\x48` (64-bit float) Zero is always encoded in tag byte.	UTF-8: `\x8x` Other strings: `\x9x` Arbitrary length and overhead	`\xbx` Arbitrary length and overhead. Length in octets.	Structs (numbered fields): `\xdx` Annotations (named fields): `\xex`
MessagePack	`\xc0`	True: `\xc3` False: `\xc2`	Single byte "fixnum" (values −32 – 127) or typecode (1 byte) + big-endian (u)int8/16/32/64	Typecode (1 byte) + IEEE single/double	Typecode + up to 15 bytes or typecode + length as uint8/16/32 + bytes; encoding is unspecified^[19]	As "fixarray" (single-byte prefix + up to 15 array items) or typecode (1 byte) + 2–4 bytes length + array items	As "fixmap" (single-byte prefix + up to 15 key-value pairs) or typecode (1 byte) + 2–4 bytes length + key-value pairs
Netstrings ^[c]	Not in protocol.	Not in protocol.	Not in protocol.	Not in protocol.	Length-encoded as an ASCII string + ':' + data + ',' Length counts only octets between ':' and ','	Not in protocol.	Not in protocol.
OGDL Binary
Property list (binary format)
Protocol Buffers			Variable encoding length signed 32-bit: varint encoding of "ZigZag"-encoded value `(n << 1) XOR (n >> 31)` Variable encoding length signed 64-bit: varint encoding of "ZigZag"-encoded `(n << 1) XOR (n >> 63)` Constant encoding length 32-bit: 32 bits in little-endian 2's complement Constant encoding length 64-bit: 64 bits in little-endian 2's complement	Floats: little-endian binary32 Doubles: little-endian binary64	UTF-8-encoded, preceded by varint-encoded integer length of string in bytes	Repeated value with the same tag or, for varint-encoded integers only, values packed contiguously and prefixed by tag and total byte length	—
Smile	`\x21`	True: `\x23` False: `\x22`	Single byte "small" (values −16 – 15 encoded as `\xc0`–`\xdf`), zigzag-encoded `varint`s (1–11 data bytes), or `BigInteger`	IEEE single/double, `BigDecimal`	Length-prefixed "short" Strings (up to 64 bytes), marker-terminated "long" Strings and (optional) back-references	Arbitrary-length heterogenous arrays with end-marker	Arbitrary-length key/value pairs with end-marker
Structured Data eXchange Formats (SDXF)			Big-endian signed 24-bit or 32-bit integer	Big-endian IEEE double	Either UTF-8 or ISO 8859-1 encoded	List of elements with identical ID and size, preceded by array header with int16 length	Chunks can contain other chunks to arbitrary depth.
Thrift

↑ Any XML based representation can be compressed, or generated as, using EXI – "Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Format 1.0 (Second Edition)".^[17] – which is a "Schema Informed" (as opposed to schema-required, or schema-less) binary compression standard for XML.
↑ All basic Ion types have a null variant, as its 0xXf tag. Any tag beginning with 0x0X other than 0x0f defines ignored padding.
↑ Interpretation of Netstrings is entirely application- or schema-dependent.

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Various binary formats have been proposed as compact representations for XML. Using a binary XML format generally reduces the verbosity of XML documents thereby also reducing the cost of parsing, but hinders the use of ordinary text editors and third-party tools to view and edit the document. There are several competing formats, but none has yet emerged as a de facto standard, although the World Wide Web Consortium adopted EXI as a Recommendation on 10 March 2011.

JSON is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of name–value pairs and arrays. It is a commonly used data format with diverse uses in electronic data interchange, including that of web applications with servers.

In the macOS, iOS, NeXTSTEP, and GNUstep programming frameworks, property list files are files that store serialized objects. Property list files use the filename extension .plist, and thus are often referred to as p-list files.

XML Information Set is a W3C specification describing an abstract data model of an XML document in terms of a set of information items. The definitions in the XML Information Set specification are meant to be used in other specifications that need to refer to the information in a well-formed XML document.

Data exchange is the process of taking data structured under a source schema and transforming it into a target schema, so that the target data is an accurate representation of the source data. Data exchange allows data to be shared between different computer programs.

Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) is a binary XML format for exchange of data on a computer network. It was developed by the W3C's Efficient Extensible Interchange Working Group and is one of the most prominent efforts to encode XML documents in a binary data format, rather than plain text. Using EXI format reduces the verbosity of XML documents as well as the cost of parsing. Improvements in the performance of writing (generating) content depends on the speed of the medium being written to, the methods and quality of actual implementations. EXI is useful for

Avro is a row-oriented remote procedure call and data serialization framework developed within Apache's Hadoop project. It uses JSON for defining data types and protocols, and serializes data in a compact binary format. Its primary use is in Apache Hadoop, where it can provide both a serialization format for persistent data, and a wire format for communication between Hadoop nodes, and from client programs to the Hadoop services. Avro uses a schema to structure the data that is being encoded. It has two different types of schema languages: one for human editing and another which is more machine-readable based on JSON.

Data Format Description Language is a modeling language for describing general text and binary data in a standard way. It was published as an Open Grid Forum Recommendation in February 2021, and in April 2024 was published as an ISO standard.

MessagePack is a computer data interchange format. It is a binary form for representing simple data structures like arrays and associative arrays. MessagePack aims to be as compact and simple as possible. The official implementation is available in a variety of languages, some official libraries and others community created, such as C, C++, C#, D, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript (NodeJS), Lua, OCaml, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala, Smalltalk, and Swift.

Smile is a computer data interchange format based on JSON. It can also be considered a binary serialization of the generic JSON data model, which means tools that operate on JSON may be used with Smile as well, as long as a proper encoder/decoder exists for the tool. The name comes from the first 2 bytes of the 4 byte header, which consist of Smiley ":)" followed by a linefeed: a choice made to make it easier to recognize Smile-encoded data files using textual command-line tools.

JData is a light-weight data annotation and exchange open-standard designed to represent general-purpose and scientific data structures using human-readable (text-based) JSON and (binary) UBJSON formats. JData specification specifically aims at simplifying exchange of hierarchical and complex data between programming languages, such as MATLAB, Python, JavaScript etc. It defines a comprehensive list of JSON-compatible "name":value constructs to store a wide range of data structures, including scalars, N-dimensional arrays, sparse/complex-valued arrays, maps, tables, hashes, linked lists, trees and graphs, and support optional data grouping and metadata for each data element. The generated data files are compatible with JSON/UBJSON specifications and can be readily processed by most existing parsers. JData-defined annotation keywords also permit storage of strongly-typed binary data streams in JSON, data compression, linking and referencing.

References

↑ Apache Thrift
↑ Bormann, Carsten (2018-12-26). "CBOR relationship with msgpack". GitHub . Retrieved 2023-08-14.
↑ "Implementations". GitHub .
↑ "HAPI FHIR - The Open Source FHIR API for Java". hapifhir.io.
↑ cpython/Lib/pickle.py
↑ "A Brief History of SOAP". www.xml.com.
↑ Ben-Kiki, Oren; Evans, Clark; Net, Ingy döt (2009-10-01). "YAML Ain't Markup Language (YAML) Version 1.2". The Official YAML Web Site. Retrieved 2012-02-10.
↑ "text_format.h - Protocol Buffers". Google Developers.
↑ "JSON Mapping - Protocol Buffers". Google Developers.
↑ "Avro Json Format".
↑ "NSPropertyListSerialization class documentation". www.gnustep.org. Archived from the original on 2011-05-19. Retrieved 2009-10-28.
↑ "Documentation Archive". developer.apple.com.
↑ Oren Ben-Kiki; Clark Evans; Brian Ingerson (2005-01-18). "Null Language-Independent Type for YAML Version 1.1". YAML.org. Retrieved 2009-09-12.
1 2 Oren Ben-Kiki; Clark Evans; Brian Ingerson (2005-01-18). "Boolean Language-Independent Type for YAML Version 1.1". YAML.org. Clark C. Evans. Retrieved 2009-09-12.
↑ Oren Ben-Kiki; Clark Evans; Brian Ingerson (2005-02-11). "Integer Language-Independent Type for YAML Version 1.1". YAML.org. Clark C. Evans. Retrieved 2009-09-12.
↑ Oren Ben-Kiki; Clark Evans; Brian Ingerson (2005-01-18). "Floating-Point Language-Independent Type for YAML Version 1.1". YAML.org. Clark C. Evans. Retrieved 2009-09-12.
↑ "Efficient Extensible Interchange".
↑ Ion Binary Encoding
↑ "MessagePack is an extremely efficient object serialization library. It's like JSON, but very fast and small.: msgpack/msgpack". 2 April 2019 – via GitHub.

External links

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[18] Any XML based representation can be compressed, or generated as, using EXI – "Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Format 1.0 (Second Edition)".^[17] – which is a "Schema Informed" (as opposed to schema-required, or schema-less) binary compression standard for XML.

[20] All basic Ion types have a null variant, as its 0xXf tag. Any tag beginning with 0x0X other than 0x0f defines ignored padding.

[22] Interpretation of Netstrings is entirely application- or schema-dependent.

[1] Apache Thrift

[2] Bormann, Carsten (2018-12-26). "CBOR relationship with msgpack". GitHub . Retrieved 2023-08-14.

[3] "Implementations". GitHub .

[4] "HAPI FHIR - The Open Source FHIR API for Java". hapifhir.io.

[5] ython/Lib/pickle.py

[xmlrpc-hist-6] "A Brief History of SOAP". www.xml.com.

[7] Ben-Kiki, Oren; Evans, Clark; Net, Ingy döt (2009-10-01). "YAML Ain't Markup Language (YAML) Version 1.2". The Official YAML Web Site. Retrieved 2012-02-10.

[8] "text_format.h - Protocol Buffers". Google Developers.

[9] "JSON Mapping - Protocol Buffers". Google Developers.

[10] "Avro Json Format".

[gnustep-11] "NSPropertyListSerialization class documentation". www.gnustep.org. Archived from the original on 2011-05-19. Retrieved 2009-10-28.

[12] "Documentation Archive". developer.apple.com.

[13] Oren Ben-Kiki; Clark Evans; Brian Ingerson (2005-01-18). "Null Language-Independent Type for YAML Version 1.1". YAML.org. Retrieved 2009-09-12.

[yamlbool-14] 1 2 Oren Ben-Kiki; Clark Evans; Brian Ingerson (2005-01-18). "Boolean Language-Independent Type for YAML Version 1.1". YAML.org. Clark C. Evans. Retrieved 2009-09-12.

[15] Oren Ben-Kiki; Clark Evans; Brian Ingerson (2005-02-11). "Integer Language-Independent Type for YAML Version 1.1". YAML.org. Clark C. Evans. Retrieved 2009-09-12.

[16] Oren Ben-Kiki; Clark Evans; Brian Ingerson (2005-01-18). "Floating-Point Language-Independent Type for YAML Version 1.1". YAML.org. Clark C. Evans. Retrieved 2009-09-12.

[17] "Efficient Extensible Interchange".

[19] Ion Binary Encoding

[21] "MessagePack is an extremely efficient object serialization library. It's like JSON, but very fast and small.: msgpack/msgpack". 2 April 2019 – via GitHub.

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