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Google open-sources XML alternative

By David Worthington

July 16, 2008 — (Page 1 of 2)
Google’s servers are awash with thousands of different data formats—so much so that the company claims XML is not efficient enough to encode it all. Instead, it has created a new interface description language (IDL) and binary format for data interchange that it is now sharing as an open-source project.

Google made code and documentation for the Protocol Buffers format available on July 7, under the Apache 2.0 open-source license.

Google is using Protocol Buffers for communicating among its internal systems that use Remote Procedure Calls systems and accessing persistent data storage. Developers can define data structures using its definition language and then compile them, producing classes that represent those structures in a particular programming language, explained Google engineer Kenton Varda in a post to the company’s software engineering team blog.

The classes, which are designated as .proto files, can read and write structured data from data streams. At this time, language support is limited to C++, Java and Python.

Varda noted that Protocol Buffers is an IDL that was designed for simplicity. IDLs are used to create a communications bridge between programs that are written in different languages or reside on different operating systems.

The framework compiles the IDL code—an intermediary format—into a binary format, which is used as a transmission protocol, explained Forrester senior analyst Jeffrey Hammond.

“By sticking to a simple lists-and-records model that solves the majority of problems and resisting the desire to chase diminishing returns,” Varda wrote, “we believe we have created something that is powerful without being bloated. And, yes, it is very fast—at least an order of magnitude faster than XML.”

Google’s documentation claims that structured data can be represented in a third to a 10th of the space required, and transmission times cut to a 20th or even a 100th of the time, compared to XML.

According to Varda, Google rejected XML because it is not efficient at the scale at which it operates and is an expensive proposition when servers and networks are running at full capacity. Also, writing code to work with the DOM tree can potentially become unwieldy.

Related Search Term(s): Open source, XML, Google

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