Seen on Builder au
“XML, it seems, has run out of steam for Google.
Google said Monday that it has created an open source project for a data interchange format called Protocol Buffers.
The software is meant to solve the problem of sharing information in a wide range of formats between servers at high speed. It’s also designed to let companies like Google upgrade software on a network of connected servers without causing hiccups.
Google thought of using XML as a lingua franca to send messages between its different servers. But XML can be complicated to work with and, more significantly, creates large files that can slow application performance.
Protocol Buffers is an alternative way of describing the format of data that is being sent over the network or stored to a hard drive. Unlike XML, it’s a compact format and is designed to be simple to use, according to Kenton Varda of Google’s Software Engineering Team.”
