Comparison of data-serialization formats

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?	Specification	Binary?	Human-readable?	Supports references?^e	Schema-IDL?	Standard APIs	Supports Zero-copy operations
Apache Avro	Apache Software Foundation	N/A	No	Apache Avro™ Specification	Yes	Partial^j	N/A	Yes (built-in)	C, C#, C++, Java, PHP, Python, Ruby	N/A
Apache Parquet	Apache Software Foundation	N/A	No	Apache Parquet	Yes	No	No	N/A	Java, Python, C++	No
ASN.1	ISO, IEC, ITU-T	N/A	Yes	ISO/IEC 8824; X.680 series of ITU-T Recommendations	Yes (BER, DER, PER, OER, or custom via ECN)	Yes (XER, JER, GSER, or custom via ECN)	Partial^f	Yes (built-in)	N/A	Yes (OER)
Bencode	Bram Cohen (creator) BitTorrent, Inc. (maintainer)	N/A	De facto standard via BitTorrent Enhancement Proposal (BEP)	Part of BitTorrent protocol specification	Partially (numbers and delimiters are ASCII)	No	No	No	No	No
Binn	Bernardo Ramos	N/A	No	Binn Specification	Yes	No	No	No	No	Yes
Blink	Pantor Engineering	N/A	No	Blink Specifications	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
BJSON	Roman Pietrzak, Sylwester Wysocki	JSON	No	BJSON Specification	Yes	No	No	No	Yes C, C++, node.js	Yes
BSON	MongoDB	JSON	No	BSON Specification	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
CBOR	Carsten Bormann, P. Hoffman	JSON (loosely)	Yes	RFC 8949	Yes	No	Yes through tagging	Yes (CDDL)	No	No
Comma-separated values (CSV)	RFC author: Yakov Shafranovich	N/A	Partial (myriad informal variants used)	RFC 4180 (among others)	No	Yes	No	No	No	No
Common Data Representation (CDR)	Object Management Group	N/A	Yes	General Inter-ORB Protocol	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	ADA, C, C++, Java, Cobol, Lisp, Python, Ruby, Smalltalk	N/A
D-Bus Message Protocol	freedesktop.org	N/A	Yes	D-Bus Specification	Yes	No	No	Partial (Signature strings)	Yes (see D-Bus)	N/A
Extensible Data Notation (EDN)	Cognitect	JSON (loosely)	Yes	EDN Specification	No	Yes	No	No	No	N/A
Efficient XML Interchange (EXI)	W3C	XML, Efficient XML	Yes	Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Format 1.0	Yes	Yes (XML)	Yes (XPointer, XPath)	Yes (XML Schema)	Yes (DOM, SAX, StAX, XQuery, XPath)	N/A
FlatBuffers	Google	N/A	No	flatbuffers github page Specification	Yes	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	Yes (XPointer, XPath)	Yes (XML schema)	Yes (DOM, SAX, XQuery, XPath)	N/A
FHIR	Health Level 7	REST basics	Yes	Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Hapi for FHIR[1] JSON, XML, Turtle	No
Ion	Amazon	JSON	No	The Amazon Ion Specification	Yes	Yes	No	Yes (Ion Schema)	No	N/A
Java serialization	Oracle Corporation	N/A	Yes	Java Object Serialization	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	N/A
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	Yes (JSON Pointer (RFC 6901); alternately: JSONPath, JPath, JSPON, json:select()), JSON-LD	Partial (JSON Schema Proposal, ASN.1 with JER, Kwalify, Rx, Itemscript Schema), 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	N/A	No	netstrings.txt	Partially (delimiters are ASCII)	Yes	No	No	No	Yes
OGDL	Rolf Veen	?	No	Specification	Yes (Binary Specification)	Yes	Yes (Path Specification)	Yes (Schema WD)		N/A
OPC-UA Binary	OPC Foundation	N/A	No	opcfoundation.org	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	N/A
OpenDDL	Eric Lengyel	C, PHP	No	OpenDDL.org	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes (OpenDDL Library)	N/A
PHP serialization format	PHP Group	N/A	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	N/A
Pickle (Python)	Guido van Rossum	Python	De facto standard via Python Enhancement Proposals (PEPs)	PEP 3154 -- Pickle protocol version 4	Yes	No	Yes[2]	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	N/A	No	Developer Guide: Encoding	Yes	Partial^d	No	Yes (built-in)	C++, Java, C#, Python, Go, Ruby, Objective-C, C, Dart, Perl, PHP, R, Rust, Scala, Swift, Julia, Erlang, D, Haskell, Action Script, Delphi, Elixir, Elm, Erlang, GopherJS, Haskell, Haxe, JavaScript, Kotlin, Lua, Matlab, Mercurt, OCaml, Prolog, Solidity, Typescript, Vala, Visual Basic	No
Ethereum Recursive Length Prefix (RLP)	Ethereum	N/A	No	Specification	Yes	No	No	No	Erlang, Go, Java, Javascript, Kotlin, Objective-C, Python, Swift, PHP	Yes
S-expressions	John McCarthy (original) Ron Rivest (internet draft)	Lisp, Netstrings	Partial (largely de facto)	"S-Expressions" Internet Draft	Yes ("Canonical representation")	Yes ("Advanced transport representation")	No	No		N/A
Smile	Tatu Saloranta	JSON	No	Smile Format Specification	Yes	No	No	Partial (JSON Schema Proposal, other JSON schemas/IDLs)	Partial (via JSON APIs implemented with Smile backend, on Jackson, Python)	N/A
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	Yes (built-in id/ref, XPointer, XPath)	Yes (WSDL, XML schema)	Yes (DOM, SAX, XQuery, XPath)	N/A
Structured Data eXchange Formats	Max Wildgrube	N/A	Yes	RFC 3072	Yes	No	No	No		N/A
Apache Thrift	Facebook (creator) Apache (maintainer)	N/A	No	Original whitepaper	Yes	Partial^c	No	Yes (built-in)	C++, Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, Erlang, Perl, Haskell, C#, Cocoa, JavaScript, Node.js, Smalltalk, OCaml, Delphi and other languages[3]	N/A
UBJSON	The Buzz Media, LLC	JSON, BSON	No		Yes	No	No	No	No	N/A
eXternal Data Representation (XDR)	Sun Microsystems (creator) IETF (maintainer)	N/A	Yes	STD 67/RFC 4506	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	N/A
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	Yes (XPointer, XPath)	Yes (XML schema, RELAX NG)	Yes (DOM, SAX, XQuery, XPath)	N/A
XML-RPC	Dave Winer[4]	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[5]	No	Version 1.2	No	Yes	Yes	Partial (Kwalify, 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

• a. ^ The current default format is binary.
• b. ^ The "classic" format is plain text, and an XML format is also supported.
• c. ^ Theoretically possible due to abstraction, but no implementation is included.
• d. ^ The primary format is binary, but a text format is available.[6]
• e. ^ 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.
• f. ^ ASN.1 does offer OIDs, a standard format for globally unique identifiers, as well as a standard notation ("absolute reference") for referencing a component of a value. Thus it would be possible to reference a component of an encoded value present in a document by combining an OID (assigned to the document) and an "absolute reference" to the component of the value. However, there is no standard way to indicate that a field contains such an absolute reference. Therefore, a generic ASN.1 tool/library cannot automatically encode/decode/resolve references within a document without help from custom-written program code.
• g. ^ VelocyPack offers a value type to store pointers to other VPack items. It is allowed if the VPack data resides in memory, but not if stored on disk or sent over a network.
• h. ^ The primary format is binary, but a text format is available.[7][8]
• i. ^ The primary format is binary, but text and json formats are available.[9]
• j. ^ The primary format is binary, a json encoder is available.[10]

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>A to Z</bookname> <bookname>We said, "no".</bookname> </SeqOfUnrelatedDatatypes>	An object (the key is a field name): <person> <isMarried>true</isMarried> <hobby /> <height>1.85</height> <name>Bob Peterson</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
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	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]	N/A	<*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]	N/A	<true />	<false />	<integer>685230</integer>	<real>6.8523015e+5</real>	<string>A to Z</string>	<array> <true /> <real>-42.1e7</real> <string>A to Z</string> </array>	<dict> <key>42</key> <true /> <key>A to Z</key> <array> <integer>1</integer> <integer>2</integer> <integer>3</integer> </array> </dict>
Protocol Buffers	N/A	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: 18923743 thing3: -44 thing4 { submessage_field1: "foo" submessage_field2: false } enumeratedThing: SomeEnumeratedValue thing5: 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	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> <item xsi:nil="true"/> <item>-42.1e7</item> <item>A to Z<item>	<map> <entry key="42">true</entry> <entry key="A to Z"> <item val="1"/> <item val="2"/> <item val="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>A to Z</string></value> </data> </array></value>	<value><struct> <member> <name>42</name> <value><boolean>1</boolean></value> </member> <member> <name>A to Z</name> <value> <array> <data> <value><int>1</int></value> <value><int>2</int></value> <value><int>3</int></value> </data> </array> </value> </member> </struct>

• a. ^ 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.
• b. ^ The RFC CSV specification only deals with delimiters, newlines, and quote characters; it does not directly deal with serializing programming data structures.
• c. ^ The netstrings specification only deals with nested byte strings; anything else is outside the scope of the specification.
• d. ^ 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.
• e. ^ 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.
• f. ^ 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^(2^1024) 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: one, two, or four 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
Binn	\x00	True: \x01 False: \x02	big-endian 2's complement signed and unsigned 8/16/32/64 bits	single: big-endian binary32 double: big-endian binary64	UTF-8 encoded, null terminated, preceded by int8 or int32 string length in bytes	Typecode (one byte) + 1-4 bytes size + 1-4 bytes items count + list items	Typecode (one byte) + 1-4 bytes size + 1-4 bytes items count + key/value pairs
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)[lower-alpha 1] (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: one byte \x01 False: \x00	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[17]	\x0f[lower-alpha 2]	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 (one byte) + big-endian (u)int8/16/32/64	Typecode (one byte) + IEEE single/double	Typecode + up to 15 bytes or typecode + length as uint8/16/32 + bytes; encoding is unspecified[18]	As "fixarray" (single-byte prefix + up to 15 array items) or typecode (one byte) + 2–4 bytes length + array items	As "fixmap" (single-byte prefix + up to 15 key-value pairs) or typecode (one byte) + 2–4 bytes length + key-value pairs
Netstrings[lower-alpha 3]	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.	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	N/A
Recursive Length Prefix	Not in protocol. \x80 (zero-length string) often used	Not in protocol. Integer 0/1 often used.	0 - 127: \x00 - \x7f Other values: Strings of big-endian encoded bytes, of arbitrary length, beginning with \x80 - \xbf	Integer encodings may be interpreted as IEEE float.	Length prefixed, up to 55 bytes: \x80 - \xb7 followed by data. 56+ bytes: \xb8 - \xbf followed by 1-8 byte integer length of string followed by data.	Length prefixed, up to 55 bytes: \xc0 - \xf7 followed by data. 56+ bytes: \xf8 - \xff followed by 1-8 byte integer length of data followed by data. Length is always in bytes, not in list items.	Not in protocol. May be encoded as lists of key/value pair lists or other formats.
Smile	\x21	True: \x23 False: \x22	Single byte "small" (values -16..15 encoded using \xc0 - \xdf), zigzag-encoded varints (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

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

See also

• Comparison of document-markup languages

References

1. "HAPI FHIR - The Open Source FHIR API for Java". hapifhir.io.
2. cpython/Lib/pickle.py
3. Apache Thrift
4. "A Brief History of SOAP". www.xml.com.
5. 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.
6. "text_format.h - Protocol Buffers". Google Developers.
7. "Cap'n Proto serialization/RPC system: core tools and C++ library - capnproto/capnproto". 2 April 2019 – via GitHub.
8. "Cap'n Proto: The capnp Tool". capnproto.org.
9. "Fast Binary Encoding is ultra fast and universal serialization solution for C++, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, Kotlin, Python, Ruby: chronoxor/FastBinaryEncoding". 2 April 2019 – via GitHub.
10. "Avro Json Format".
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.
14. 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. Ion Binary Encoding
18. "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

• XML-QL Proposal discussing XML benefits
• Daring to Do Less with XML