Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

XML VS Protocol Buffers

Compare XML VS Protocol Buffers and see what are their differences

XML logo XML

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding...

Protocol Buffers logo Protocol Buffers

A method for serializing and interchanging structured data.
  • XML Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-06-20
  • Protocol Buffers Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-02

XML features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

Protocol Buffers features and specs

  • Efficiency
    Protocol Buffers are designed to be compact and efficient, using less space compared to other serialization formats like XML or JSON. This efficiency benefits both storage and network transmission.
  • Backward and Forward Compatibility
    Protocol Buffers support easy schema evolution. New fields can be added to your protocol without breaking existing deployed programs that are compiled with an older version of the protocol.
  • Performance
    They offer fast serialization and deserialization, which can significantly improve performance in applications where speed is critical.
  • Language Support
    Protocol Buffers are supported in multiple programming languages, making them flexible for use in diverse tech stacks and across different systems.
  • Type Safety
    With Protocol Buffers, schemas are strictly defined, which provides a level of type safety compared to text-based formats like JSON or XML.

Possible disadvantages of Protocol Buffers

  • Learning Curve
    The initial setup and understanding of Protocol Buffers can be complex for those who are not familiar with binary serialization formats.
  • Debugging Difficulty
    Because Protocol Buffers use a compact and binary format, debugging can be more challenging compared to human-readable formats like JSON or XML.
  • Limited Human Readability
    As a binary format, Protocol Buffers are not easily readable without decoding, which can complicate manual inspection of data during development or troubleshooting.
  • Third-Party Dependency
    Using Protocol Buffers often requires integrating additional libraries into your project, which can introduce dependencies that need to be maintained.
  • Tooling Overhead
    The use of Protocol Buffers requires a compilation step and the generation of code from .proto files, which adds complexity and build-time overhead.

XML videos

What is XML | XML Beginner Tutorial | Learn XML with Demo in 10 min

More videos:

  • Review - XML REview
  • Review - oXygen XML Editor - Review Panel

Protocol Buffers videos

Protocol Buffers- A Banked Journey - Christopher Reeves

More videos:

  • Review - justforfunc #30: The Basics of Protocol Buffers
  • Review - Complete Introduction to Protocol Buffers 3 : How are Protocol Buffers used?

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to XML and Protocol Buffers)
Software Development
100 100%
0% 0
Configuration Management
33 33%
67% 67
Web Servers
0 0%
100% 100
Developer Tools
42 42%
58% 58

User comments

Share your experience with using XML and Protocol Buffers. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Protocol Buffers seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 24 times since March 2021. 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.

XML mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of XML yet. Tracking of XML recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Protocol Buffers mentions (24)

  • Vibe Code Like a Pro: Build an MVP Web App with MongoDB Atlas in <1 Hour Using Cursor
    First, we need to define our data model and API endpoints using Protocol Buffers. They are an industry standard when it comes to low-latency, high-performance data serialization. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Pulumi Gestalt 0.0.1 released
    A schema.json converter for easier ingestion (likely supporting Avro and Protobuf). - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Understanding Protocol Buffers: A Fast Alternative to JSON
    Protocol Buffers Documentation Protobuf Json JSON in API Development. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • gRPC: what is it? An introduction...
    For our luck, Go is one of the 11 languages with official libraries. It is important to say that the framework uses Protocol Buffer to serialize the message. The first step then is to install locally the protobuf and its Go plugins:. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Why should we use Protobuf in Web API as data transfer protocol.
    Note: Clients and services will ignore field numbers they do not recognize. For more details about Protobuf, visit protobuf.dev. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing XML and Protocol Buffers, you can also consider the following products

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

Messagepack - An efficient binary serialization format.

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

TOML - TOML - Tom's Obvious, Minimal Language

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

Dhall Configuration Language - A non-repetitive alternative to YAML