From: Jim Whitehead (ejw@ics.uci.edu)
Date: Fri May 19 2000 - 11:44:44 PDT
> > Binary protocols are smaller, faster, language-independant,
> > unpatentable, and free.
>
> "smaller": yes, the data is smaller. The implementation is much larger.
> "faster": true, in general.
> "language-independent": XML-RPC has bindings to more languages than ILU
> or CORBA, despite being a fraction of their age.
> "unpatentable": you must know something about patent law I don't :)
> "free": I'm not sure what this means, but there's nothing that's any
> more "free" about IIOP than XML-RPC.
This misses the most important point: who are the consumers of the protocol,
and how do they consume it. It turns out that a protocol has many consumers:
1. The community of protocol developers that creates the protocol
2. Developers who implement the protocol
3. Third parties (analysts, managers, consultants, authors) who mediate
discussion on the protocol, and help decision making about the protocol
4. Programs that issue messages in the protocol
The discussion in this thread has primarily been about consumer group #4,
and #2. For groups 1-3, a text-based protocol has significant advantages,
since it is easier to understand, and this aids adoption.
The discussion has also not addressed the achilles heel of binary protocols:
extensibility. Any XML based protocol is going to have superior
extensibility over most binary protocols, ASN.1 excepted.
- Jim
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