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gRPC VS Dhall Configuration Language

Compare gRPC VS Dhall Configuration Language and see what are their differences

gRPC logo gRPC

Application and Data, Languages & Frameworks, Remote Procedure Call (RPC), and Service Discovery

Dhall Configuration Language logo Dhall Configuration Language

A non-repetitive alternative to YAML
  • gRPC Landing page
    Landing page //
    2024-05-27
  • Dhall Configuration Language Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-27

gRPC features and specs

  • Performance
    gRPC uses Protocol Buffers, which are more efficient in terms of serialization and deserialization compared to text-based formats like JSON. This leads to lower CPU usage and faster transmission, making it suitable for high-performance applications.
  • Bi-directional Streaming
    gRPC supports bi-directional streaming, enabling both client and server to send a series of messages through a single connection. This is particularly useful for real-time communication applications.
  • Strongly Typed APIs
    gRPC uses Protocol Buffers for defining service methods and message types, providing a strong type system that can catch potential issues at compile-time rather than runtime.
  • Cross-language Support
    gRPC supports a wide range of programming languages, including but not limited to Java, C++, Python, Go, and C#. This allows for flexible integration in polyglot environments.
  • Built-in Deadlines/Timeouts
    gRPC natively supports deadlines and timeouts to help manage long-running calls and avoid indefinite blocking, improving robustness and reliability.
  • Automatic Code Generation
    gRPC provides tools for automatic code generation from .proto files, reducing boilerplate code and speeding up the development process.

Possible disadvantages of gRPC

  • Learning Curve
    The complexity of gRPC and Protocol Buffers may present a steep learning curve for developers who are not familiar with these technologies.
  • Limited Browser Support
    gRPC was not originally designed with browser support in mind, making it challenging to directly call gRPC services from web applications without additional tools like gRPC-Web.
  • Verbose Configuration
    Setting up gRPC and defining .proto files can be more verbose compared to simpler RESTful APIs, which might be a deterrent for smaller projects.
  • HTTP/2 Requirement
    gRPC relies on HTTP/2 for transport, which can be problematic in environments where HTTP/2 is not supported or requires additional configuration.
  • Limited Monitoring and Debugging Tools
    Compared to REST, there are fewer tools available for monitoring, debugging, and testing gRPC services, which might complicate troubleshooting and performance tuning.
  • Protobuf Ecosystem Requirement
    Depending on the language, integrating Protocol Buffers might require additional dependencies and tooling, which could add to the maintenance overhead.

Dhall Configuration Language features and specs

  • Deterministic
    Dhall is designed to be a deterministic configuration language, meaning that given the same input, it will always produce the same output. This ensures consistency and repeatability across environments.
  • Type-Safe
    Dhall includes a strong static type system, preventing many common errors associated with misconfigurations. Types are checked at compile time, ensuring configuration values meet specific criteria before deployment.
  • Total Programming Language
    Unlike many other configuration languages, Dhall is a total functional programming language, which means every program written in Dhall will terminate. This prevents infinite loops and other runtime issues.
  • Interoperability
    Dhall can generate JSON, YAML, and other data interchange formats, making it highly interoperable with existing systems that require these formats for configuration.
  • Modular
    Dhall allows for modular configuration files. You can define reusable components and import them across different configurations, promoting DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principles.

Possible disadvantages of Dhall Configuration Language

  • Learning Curve
    While Dhall is designed to be simple, the presence of a type system and functional programming concepts can present a learning curve to new users, especially those without a programming background.
  • Tooling Support
    Compared to more established languages, Dhall has less tooling support. Users might find fewer IDE extensions, plugins, or community libraries to assist in development.
  • Limited Ecosystem
    Being relatively new, Dhall has a smaller ecosystem that may lack the breadth of community contributions, such as templates and integration examples, found in more mature configuration languages.
  • Performance Overhead
    The type checking and interpretation of Dhall can introduce some performance overhead compared to more traditional configuration formats like JSON or YAML, which are simpler to parse.
  • Complexity for Simple Configurations
    For simple configurations, the added complexity of Dhall's type system and functional features may be unnecessary, leading to overhead without a clear benefit.

gRPC videos

gRPC, Protobufs and Go... OH MY! An introduction to building client/server systems with gRPC

More videos:

  • Review - gRPC with Mark Rendle
  • Review - GraphQL, gRPC or REST? Resolving the API Developer's Dilemma - Rob Crowley - NDC Oslo 2020
  • Review - Taking Full Advantage of gRPC
  • Review - gRPC Web: It’s All About Communication by Alex Borysov & Yevgen Golubenko
  • Review - tRPC, gRPC, GraphQL or REST: when to use what?

Dhall Configuration Language videos

No Dhall Configuration Language videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to gRPC and Dhall Configuration Language)
Web Servers
100 100%
0% 0
Configuration Management
0 0%
100% 100
Developer Tools
59 59%
41% 41
Software Development
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare gRPC and Dhall Configuration Language

gRPC Reviews

SignalR Alternatives
SignalR is basically used to allow connection between client and server or vice-versa. It is a type of bi-directional communication between both the client and server. SignalR is compatible with web sockets and many other connections, which help in the direct push of content over the server. There are many alternatives for signalR that are used, like Firebase, pusher,...
Source: www.educba.com

Dhall Configuration Language Reviews

We have no reviews of Dhall Configuration Language yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

gRPC might be a bit more popular than Dhall Configuration Language. We know about 96 links to it since March 2021 and only 91 links to Dhall Configuration Language. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

gRPC mentions (96)

  • Getting Started With gRPC in Golang
    gRPC is a framework for building fast, scalable APIs, especially in distributed systems like microservices. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Should You Ditch REST for gRPC?
    Recently, I started working on extending the support for gRPC in GoFr, a microservices oriented, Golang framework also listed in CNCF Landscape. As I was diving into this, I thought it would be a great opportunity to share my findings through a detailed article. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Unlocking DuckDB from Anywhere - A Guide to Remote Access with Apache Arrow and Flight RPC (gRPC)
    Apache Arrow Flight RPC : Arrow Flight is an RPC framework for high-performance data services based on Arrow data, and is built on top of gRPC and the IPC format. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • JSON vs FlatBuffers vs Protocol Buffers
    Generally used in conjunction with gRPC (but not necessarily), Protobuf is a binary protocol that significantly increases performance compared to the text format of JSON. But it "suffers" from the same problem as JSON: we need to parse it to a data structure of our language. For example, in Go:. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Performance and Scalability for Database-Backed Applications
    We can take the previously mentioned idea of partitioning the database further by breaking up an application into multiple applications, each with its own database. In this case each application will communicate with the others via something like REST, RPC (e.g. gRPC), or a message queue (e.g. Redis, Kafka, or RabbitMQ). - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
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Dhall Configuration Language mentions (91)

  • Any program can be a GitHub Actions shell
    I'll give a shot at some guiding principals: 1. Do not use yaml. All github action logic should be written in a language that compiles to yaml, for example dhall (https://dhall-lang.org/). Yaml is an awful language for programmers, and it's a worse language for non-programmers. It's good for no one. 2. To the greatest extent possible, do not use any actions which install things. For example, don't use... - Source: Hacker News / 27 days ago
  • StrictYAML
    I'm a fan of anything that moves us away from stringly typed nonsense. See also Dhall (which can render to yaml). I like the idea but found the veneer broke a little too often and left me squinting at Haskell. https://dhall-lang.org/. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Some Programming Language Ideas
    I think you're asking for Starlark (https://starlark-lang.org), a language that strongly resembles Python but isn't Turing-complete, originally designed at Google for use in their build system. There's also Dhall (https://dhall-lang.org), which targets configuration use cases; I'm less familiar with it. One problem is that, while non-Turing-completeness can be helpful for maintainability, it's not really... - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • 8 months of OCaml after 8 years of Haskell in production
    > Lambda calculus is as pure as can be, and also has terms that don't normalize. That is not considered a side effect. Many typed lambda calculi do normalise. You can also have a look https://dhall-lang.org/ for some pragmatic that normalises. > A better example of impurity in Haskell for pragmatic's sake is the trace function, that can be used to print debugging information from pure functions. Well, but that's... - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Thoughts on ThoughtWorks Radar 2024
    I was first turned onto Pkl during my Dhall Trough of Disillusionment phase (Dhall is cool, but man is it hard) by James Ward. It looked to be a language that had enough types to compile YAML/JSON configuration files wayyyy more safely. I’ve had enough YAML/JSON misconfigurations break production, that I started looking into ways to compile those problems away, and Dhall helped a lot, but the learning curve and... - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing gRPC and Dhall Configuration Language, you can also consider the following products

Apache Thrift - An interface definition language and communication protocol for creating cross-language services.

YAML - YAML 1.2 --- YAML: YAML Ain't Markup Language

GraphQL - GraphQL is a data query language and runtime to request and deliver data to mobile and web apps.

Jsonnet - A powerful DSL for elegant description of JSON data.

Eureka - Eureka is a contact center and enterprise performance through speech analytics that immediately reveals insights from automated analysis of communications including calls, chat, email, texts, social media, surveys and more.

JSON - (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format