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Binary protocol

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A binary protocol is a protocol which is intended or expected to be read by a machine rather than a human being, as opposed to a plain text protocol such as IRC, SMTP, or HTTP. Binary protocols have the advantage of terseness, which translates into speed of transmission and interpretation.

There has always been tension between two software development camps that believe new protocols should preferably be text based or binary, respectively. In recent years, with the ready availability of network bandwidth and mass storage, the text based camp has been gaining significant ground - XML based systems are nearly ubiquitous - but the debate continues[1].

See also

References

  1. ^ http://www.webservices.org/weblog/mark_little/soap_for_the_masses A representative discussion of text and binary protocol debate, by Mark Little

Chapter 5 of "The Tao of Unix Programming" champions textual formats over binary protocols.

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