Protobuff and gRPC
- 1. Protocol Buffer & gRPC
- 2. Data Serialization Data serialization is the process of converting structured data to a format that allows sharing or storing of data in a from that allow recovery of its original structure. De- serialization is the exact opposite. Serialization formats • XML • JSON • CSV • YML • Protobuf etc.
- 3. Protocol buffers • Protocol buffers are a flexible, efficient, automated mechanism for serializing structured data and its • Language-neutral • Platform-neutral • Extensible
- 4. JSON • Advantages • Data can take any forms (arrays, nested elements) • Is a widely accepted format in web • Can ne read by pretty much any language • Can be easily shared over a network • Disadvantages • Data has no schema enforcing • Json Objects can be quite big in size because of repeated keys • No comments, metadata
- 5. protobuff • Advantages • Data is fully typed • Data is compressed automatically (less CPU usage) • Schema is needed to generate code and read the data • Documentation can be embedded in the schema • Data can be read across any language(Java, C#, Go, Python, JS etc..) • Schema can be evolved over the time, in a safe manner • 3-10x smaller, 20-100x faster then XML • Code is generated for you automatically • Disadvantages: • Support for some language might be lacking • Can’t open the serialized data with the text editor
- 6. Structure message Person { string first_name = 1; string last_name = 2; int32 age = 3; }
- 7. HTTP 1.1 vs HTTP/2
- 8. gRPC • Developed by Google, under the name Stubby. • In 2015 Google liberalized it as open source and named it gRPC. • Adopted by large companies in the very first year like Netflix, Cisco, Docker etc. • Became part of Cloud Native Computing Foundation in 2017.
- 9. Core features that make it awesome • Idiomatic client libraries in 11 languages • Highly efficient on wire and with a simple service definition framework • Bi-directional streaming with http/2 based transport • Pluggable auth, tracing, load balancing and health checking
- 11. gRPC Interaction • Unary: when the client sends a single request and receives a single response. • Server-streaming: when the server responds with a stream of messages to a client's request. Once all the data is sent, the server additionally delivers a status message to complete the • Client-streaming: when the client sends a stream of messages and in turn receives a single response message from the server. • Bidirectional-streaming: the two streams (client and server) are independent, meaning that they both can transmit messages in any order. The client is the one who initiates and ends the