Re: Google protocol buffers

> One of the big weaknesses in Beagle is that the messaging system
> between beagled and beagled-index-helper and between beagled and
> clients is a slow, bloated XML format.

Its actually not that bad :-D. I used to think the same for a long
long time. Then I did some experiments and it turned out the XML based
serialization is a good compromise between speed and code management.
Once the compiled XML serializer kicks in replacing the reflection
based serializer, things become even smoother. But even the
serialization based serialization is not that slow.

Where it gains is that there is practically no extra piece of code
needed to define the data structures. All kinds of collections (e.g.
lists) and other complicated data structure just work. Without
requiring a separate interface definition file. The last requirement
is crucial due to way we allow plugins to create serializable data.
Its not impossible otherwise but requires significant effort.

That said, a binary serialization method, *if correctly done*, could
be both helpful and easy to manage. Lukas started a branch for D-Bus
based serialization - once its done we will have a direct way of
comparison.

- dBera

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Debajyoti Bera @ http://dtecht.blogspot.com
beagle / KDE fan
Mandriva / Inspiron-1100 user