Google Unveils XML Alternative
By: Doug Caverly
The search giant didn’t spit out any insults, and it didn’t demand that everyone follow in its footsteps, either. Still, it may be of interest to XML fans that, when faced with the problem of encoding a lot of data, Google will now be using an XML alternative called Protocol Buffers.
“As nice as XML is, it isn’t going to be efficient enough for this scale,” wrote Kenton Varda on the Google Open Source Blog. “When all of your machines and network links are running at capacity, XML is an extremely expensive proposition. Not to mention, writing code to work with the DOM tree can sometimes become unwieldy.”
He later concluded, “By sticking to a simple lists-and-records model that solves the majority of problems and resisting the desire to chase diminishing returns, 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.”
Again, though, it doesn’t look like Google’s trying to bring about the end of XML. Way too much time and effort has gone into XML, anyway (check out the 6,150-word Wikipedia article), for the language to get tossed aside so quickly.
If you want to learn more about Protocol Buffers, Google’s made the documentation and code available to everyone.