Comparison of data serialization formats

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

Contents

[edit] Overview

Name Creator/Maintainer Based on Standardized? Specification Binary? Human-readable? Can store relational data? Schema? Standard APIs
ASN.1 ISO, IEC, ITU-T Template:N/a Yes ISO/IEC 8824; X.680 series of ITU-T Recommendations Yes Yes (XER) No Yes (built-in) No
BSON MongoDB JSON Yes BSON Specification Yes No No No No
Comma-separated values (CSV) RFC author:
Yakov Shafranovich 		Template:N/a Partial
(myriad informal variants used) 		RFC 4180
(among others) 		No Yes No No No
JSON Douglas Crockford JavaScript syntax Yes RFC 4627 No, but see BSON Yes No Partial
(Kwalify, Rx, JSON Schema Proposal) 		No
Netstrings Dan Bernstein Template:N/a Yes netstrings.txt Yes Yes No No No
OGDL Rolf Veen ? Yes 1.0 Working draft Yes
(Binary 1.0 Working draft) 		Yes Yes
(Path 1.0 Working draft) 		Yes
(Schema WD)
Property list NeXT (creator)
Apple (maintainer) 		? Partial Public DTD for XML format Yesa Yesb No ? Cocoa, CoreFoundation, OpenStep, GnuStep
Protocol Buffers Google Template:N/a Partial Developer Guide: Encoding Yes Partiald No Yes (built-in)
S-expressions Internet Draft author:
Ron Rivest 		Lisp, Netstrings Partial
(largely de facto) 		"S-Expressions" Internet Draft No Yes No No
Thrift Facebook (creator)
Apache (maintainer) 		Template:N/a No Original whitepaper Yes Partialc No Yes (built-in)
eXternal Data Representation IETF Template:N/a Yes RFC 4506 Yes ? ? Yes ?
XML W3C SGML Yes W3C Recommendations:
1.0 (Fifth Edition)
1.1 (Second Edition) 		Partial
(Binary XML) 		Yes Yes (XPointer, XPath) Yes (XML schema) DOM, SAX, XQuery, XPath
YAML Clark Evans, Ingy döt Net, and Oren Ben-Kiki XML, C, Python, Perl, Email Yes Version 1.2 No Yes Yes Partial (Kwalify, Rx), (built-in language type-defs) No
  • 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.[1]

[edit] Syntax comparison of human-readable formats

Format Null Boolean true Boolean false Integer Floating-point String Array Associative array/Object
CSVb nulla
(or an empty element in the row)a 		1a
truea 		0a
falsea 		685230
-685230a 		6.8523015e+5a A to Z
"We said, ""no""." 		true,,-42.1e7,"A to Z" 
42,1
A to Z,1,2,3
Netstringsc 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] nulla truea falsea 685230a 6.8523015e+5a "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)
Property list
(plain text format)[2] 		Template: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)[3][4] 		Template: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>
S-expressions NIL
nil 		T
#te
true 		NIL
#fe
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<code>
<code>Null
NULL[5] 		y
Y
yes
Yes
YES
on
On
ON
true
True
TRUE[6] 		n
N
no
No
NO
off
Off
OFF
false
False
FALSE[6] 		685230
+685_230
-685230
02472256
0x_0A_74_AE
0b1010_0111_0100_1010_1110
190:20:30[7] 		6.8523015e+5
685.230_15e+03
685_230.15
190:20:30.15
.inf
-.inf
.Inf
.INF
.NaN
.nan
.NAN[8] 		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]
XMLd <null />a <boolean val="true"/>a

<true />a

<boolean val="false"/>a

<false />a

<integer>685230</integer>a <float>6.8523015e+5</float>a A to Z a
<array>
  <element type="boolean">true</element>
  <element type="null"/>
  <element type="float">-42.1e7</element>
  <element type="string">A to Z</element>
</array>
a
<associative-array>
  <entry>
    <key type="integer">42</key>
    <value type="boolean">true</value>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <key type="string">A to Z</key>
    <value>
      <array>
        <element type="integer" val="1"/>
        <element type="integer" val="2"/>
        <element type="integer" val="3"/>
      <array>
    </value>
  </entry>
</associative-array>
  • a. ^ One possible encoding; the specification document does not specifically give 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. ^ XML in and of itself is not a data serialization language, but many data serialization formats have been derived from it; as such, there are many different ways, in addition to those shown, to serialize programming data structures into XML.
  • e. ^ This syntax is not compatible with the Internet-Draft, but is used by some dialects of Lisp.

[edit] Comparison of binary formats

Format Null Booleans Integer Floating-point String Array Associative array/Object
ASN.1
Netstrings 0:, True: 1:1,

False: 1:0,

OGDL Binary
Property list
(binary format)
Protocol Buffers[9] 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: 54 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
Thrift (protocol)

[edit] Notes

  1. ↑ http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers/docs/reference/cpp/google.protobuf.text_format.html
  2. ↑ http://www.gnustep.org/resources/documentation/Developer/Base/Reference/NSPropertyList.html
  3. ↑ http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man5/plist.5.html
  4. ↑ http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/CoreFoundation/Conceptual/CFPropertyLists/Articles/XMLTags.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20001172-CJBEJBHH
  5. ↑ "Null Language-Independent Type for YAML™ Version 1.1". YAML.org. 2005-01-18. http://yaml.org/type/null.html. Retrieved 2009-09-12. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Boolean Language-Independent Type for YAML™ Version 1.1". YAML.org. Clark C. Evans. 2005-01-18. http://yaml.org/type/bool.html. Retrieved 2009-09-12. 
  7. ↑ "Integer Language-Independent Type for YAML Version 1.1". YAML.org. Clark C. Evans. 2005-02-11. http://yaml.org/type/int.html. Retrieved 2009-09-12. 
  8. ↑ "Floating-Point Language-Independent Type for YAML™ Version 1.1". YAML.org. Clark C. Evans. 2005-01-18. http://yaml.org/type/float.html. Retrieved 2009-09-12. 
  9. ↑ http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers/docs/encoding.html

[edit] References
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