<story><title>FlexBuffers</title><url>https://google.github.io/flatbuffers/flexbuffers.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>uluyol</author><text>So here&amp;#x27;s how I think this fits into all the other different types of data serialization:&lt;p&gt;Schema-ful, copying:
Protobuf, Thrift, plenty more&lt;p&gt;Schema-ful, zero-copy: Cap&amp;#x27;n&amp;#x27;proto, Flatbuffers&lt;p&gt;Schema-less, copying: Json (binary and other variants included), XML&lt;p&gt;Schema-less, zero-copy: Flexbuffers (Any others? This seems new to me)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tannhaeuser</author><text>While it&amp;#x27;s true that XML is a generic serialization of angle-bracket markup that doesn&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;need&lt;/i&gt; a schema for serialization (which was exactly the main motivation for its &amp;quot;invention&amp;quot; as a SGML subset), the reason it&amp;#x27;s being used in inter-party or long-term&amp;#x2F;loosely-coupled service payload serialization is because it has fairly powerful and well-established schema languages (XML DTDs and XML Schema) for validation. This is unlike JSON which thrives in ad-hoc serialization for tightly-coupled back-ends and web front-ends (and only in that scenario IMHO). So I don&amp;#x27;t think XML belongs into the &amp;quot;schema-less, copying&amp;quot; category.</text></comment>
<story><title>FlexBuffers</title><url>https://google.github.io/flatbuffers/flexbuffers.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>uluyol</author><text>So here&amp;#x27;s how I think this fits into all the other different types of data serialization:&lt;p&gt;Schema-ful, copying:
Protobuf, Thrift, plenty more&lt;p&gt;Schema-ful, zero-copy: Cap&amp;#x27;n&amp;#x27;proto, Flatbuffers&lt;p&gt;Schema-less, copying: Json (binary and other variants included), XML&lt;p&gt;Schema-less, zero-copy: Flexbuffers (Any others? This seems new to me)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>leakybucket</author><text>We&amp;#x27;re still early in development, but the ZNG format is one we&amp;#x27;re working on for schema-less, semi-structured, zero-copy operations:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;brimsec&amp;#x2F;zq&amp;#x2F;blob&amp;#x2F;master&amp;#x2F;zng&amp;#x2F;docs&amp;#x2F;spec.md#1-introduction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;brimsec&amp;#x2F;zq&amp;#x2F;blob&amp;#x2F;master&amp;#x2F;zng&amp;#x2F;docs&amp;#x2F;spec.md#1...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;We currently use this to store security log data, but think it&amp;#x27;s an interesting midpoint between having no schema at all vs requiring schema registries to do useful work.</text></comment>