computer networking A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...

, a wire protocol refers to a way of getting

data Data ( , ) are a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted for ...

from point to point: A wire protocol is needed if more than one application has to interoperate. It generally refers to

communication protocol A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics (computer science), sem ...

s higher than the physical layer. In contrast to

transport protocol Transport (in British English) or transportation (in American English) is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land ( rail and road), water, cable, pipelines, a ...

s at the transport level (like TCP or UDP), the term ''wire protocol'' is used to describe a common way to exchange information at the application level. It refers to an

application layer An application layer is an abstraction layer that specifies the shared communication protocols and interface methods used by hosts in a communications network. An ''application layer'' abstraction is specified in both the Internet Protocol Su ...

protocol and defines all the required attributes for the data exchange, like data types (units of data, message formats, etc.), communication endpoints and capabilities (such as delivery guarantees, direction of communication, etc.). Usually, the data is represented at the application level as a common infoset (e.g.

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

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced or ) is an open standard file format and electronic data interchange, data interchange format that uses Human-readable medium and data, human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consi ...

YAML YAML ( ) is a human-readable data serialization language. It is commonly used for configuration files and in applications where data is being stored or transmitted. YAML targets many of the same communications applications as Extensible Marku ...

) and requires a mechanism of data binding (using e.g. a common encoding scheme like

XSD XSD (XML Schema Definition), a recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), specifies how to formally describe the elements in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) document. It can be used by programmers to verify each piece of item cont ...

). The wire protocol may be either text-based or a

binary protocol A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics, and synchronization of ...

. Although an important architectural decision, this is a separate matter from the distinction between wire protocols and programmatic APIs. In

electronics Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...

, a wire protocol is the mechanism used to transmit data from one point to another.

Functionality

A wire protocol provides the means for the interoperation of one or more applications in a network. They often refer to distributed object protocols, or they use applications that were designed to work together. As the name suggests, these distributed object protocols run in different processes in one or several computers that are connected over a network.

Types

Wire protocols provide the means for a program running under one operating system to communicate with a program running under some other operating system over a network such as an organization's

intranet An intranet is a computer network for sharing information, easier communication, collaboration tools, operational systems, and other computing services within an organization, usually to the exclusion of access by outsiders. The term is used in ...

or the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

. The protocol thus interconnects multiple platforms. Some wire protocols are language-independent, allowing the communication of programs written in different

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

s. Examples of wire protocols include: * IIOP for

CORBA The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard defined by the Object Management Group (OMG) designed to facilitate the communication of systems that are deployed on diverse platforms. CORBA enables collaboration between sy ...

* RTPS for DDS * Java Debug Wire Protocol ( JDWP) for Java debugging * JRMP for RMI *

SOAP Soap is a salt (chemistry), salt of a fatty acid (sometimes other carboxylic acids) used for cleaning and lubricating products as well as other applications. In a domestic setting, soaps, specifically "toilet soaps", are surfactants usually u ...

for

Web services A web service (WS) is either: * a service offered by an electronic device to another electronic device, communicating with each other via the Internet, or * a server running on a computer device, listening for requests at a particular port over a n ...

* AMQP for

message-oriented middleware Message-oriented middleware (MOM) is software or hardware infrastructure supporting sending and receiving messages between distributed systems. Message-oriented middleware is in contrast to streaming-oriented middleware where data is communicate ...

PostgreSQL wire protocol

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wire Protocol Application layer protocols

Functionality

Types

See also

References