Various

binary Binary may refer to: Science and technology Mathematics * Binary number, a representation of numbers using only two digits (0 and 1) * Binary function, a function that takes two arguments * Binary operation, a mathematical operation that ta ...

formats have been proposed as compact representations for

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...

(''Extensible Markup Language''). Using a binary XML format generally reduces the verbosity of XML documents thereby also reducing the cost of parsing, but hinders the use of ordinary text editors and third-party tools to view and edit the document. There are several competing formats, but none has yet emerged as a ''

de facto standard A ''de facto'' standard is a custom or convention that has achieved a dominant position by public acceptance or market forces (for example, by early entrance to the market). is a Latin phrase (literally " in fact"), here meaning "in practice b ...

'', although the

World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working ...

adopted EXI as a Recommendation on 10 March 2011. Binary XML is typically used in applications where the performance of standard XML is insufficient, but the ability to convert the document to and from a form (XML) which ''is'' easily viewed and edited is valued. Other advantages may include enabling random access and indexing of XML documents. The major challenge for binary XML is to create a single, widely adopted standard. The

International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Art ...

(ISO) and the

International Telecommunication Union The International Telecommunication Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Unio ...

(ITU) published the

Fast Infoset Fast Infoset (or FI) is an international standard that specifies a binary encoding format for the XML Information Set (''XML Infoset'') as an alternative to the XML document format. It aims to provide more efficient serialization than the text- ...

standard in 2007 and 2005, respectively. Another standard (ISO/IEC 23001-1), known as Binary MPEG format for XML ( BiM), has been standardized by the

ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...

in 2001. BiM is used by many ETSI standards for digital TV and mobile TV. The

Open Geospatial Consortium The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), an international voluntary consensus standards organization for geospatial content and location-based services, sensor web and Internet of Things, GIS data processing and data sharing. It originated in 199 ...

provides a Binary XML Encoding Specification (currently a Best Practice Paper) optimized for geo-related data (GML) and also a benchmark to compare performance of Fast InfoSet, EXI, BXML and deflate to encode/decode

AIXM The Aeronautical Information Exchange Model (AIXM) is designed to enable the management and distribution of Aeronautical Information Services (AIS) data in digital format. AIXM is based on Geography Markup Language (GML) and is one of the GML Applic ...

. Alternatives to binary XML include using traditional file compression methods on XML documents (for example

gzip gzip is a file format and a software application used for file compression and decompression. The program was created by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler as a free software replacement for the compress program used in early Unix systems, and i ...

); or using an existing standard such as ASN.1. Traditional compression methods, however, offer only the advantage of reduced file size, without the advantage of decreased parsing time or random access. ASN.1/PER forms the basis of

, which is one binary XML standard. There are also hybrid approaches (e.g., VTD-XML) that attach a small index file to an XML document to eliminate the overhead of parsing.

Binary XML Efforts

Projects and file formats related to the notion of binary XML include: * BiM Standard, from the

, developed by the

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by ISO and IEC that sets standards for media coding, including compression coding of audio, video, graphics, and genomic data; and transmission and f ...

working group *

, a standard published by ISO/IEC and ITU-T
Efficient XML Interchange (EXI)
W3C Recommendation, based on work by Efficient XML from AgileDelta, Inc. * Extensible Binary Meta Language (EBML) from

Matroska Matroska is a project to create a container format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture, or subtitle tracks in one file. The Matroska Multimedia Container is similar in concept to other containers like AVI, MP4, or Advanc ...

* WAP Binary XML (WBXML)
.NET Binary Format: XML Data Structure
from

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

; the implementation included in

.NET Framework The .NET Framework (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until bein ...

3.0 and later.
Binary Markup Language
(BML) Other projects that have functionality related to (or competing with) binary representations include: * VTD-XML from XimpleWare and VTD-XML project *

Protocol Buffers Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) is a free and open-source cross-platform data format used to serialize structured data. It is useful in developing programs to communicate with each other over a network or for storing data. The method involves an i ...

from Google *

Apache Thrift Thrift is an interface definition language and binary communication protocol used for defining and creating services for numerous programming languages. It was developed at Facebook for "scalable cross-language services development" and as of ...

Data Distribution Service The Data Distribution Service (DDS) for real-time systems is an Object Management Group (OMG) machine-to-machine (sometimes called middleware or connectivity framework) standard that aims to enable dependable, high-performance, interoperable, re ...

from OMG *

Apache Avro Avro is a row-oriented remote procedure call and data serialization framework developed within Apache's Hadoop project. It uses JSON for defining data types and protocols, and serializes data in a compact binary format. Its primary use is in Ap ...

for Big Data * Android application package uses an undocumented binary XML format.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Binary Xml XML Data serialization formats

Binary XML Efforts

See also

References