Various

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

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 data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

(Extensible

Markup Language A markup language is a Encoding, text-encoding system which specifies the structure and formatting of a document and potentially the relationships among its parts. Markup can control the display of a document or enrich its content to facilitate au ...

Binary representation

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, 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 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...

adopted

Efficient XML Interchange Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) is a binary XML format for exchange of data on a computer network. It was developed by the W3C's Efficient Extensible Interchange Working Group and is one of the most prominent efforts to encode XML documents in a ...

(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 Random access (also called direct access) is the ability to access an arbitrary element of a sequence in equal time or any datum from a population of addressable elements roughly as easily and efficiently as any other, no matter how many elemen ...

and

index Index (: indexes or indices) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Index (''A Certain Magical Index''), a character in the light novel series ''A Certain Magical Index'' * The Index, an item on the Halo Array in the ...

ing 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 independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. M ...

(ISO) and the

International Telecommunication Union The International Telecommunication Union (ITU)In the other common languages of the ITU: * * is a list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information ...

(ITU) published the Fast Infoset standard in 2007 and 2005, respectively. Another standard (ISO/IEC 23001-1), known as Binary MPEG format for XML (

BiM Building information modeling (BIM) is an approach involving the generation and management of digital representations of the physical and functional characteristics of buildings or other physical assets and facilities. BIM is supported by vario ...

), has been standardized by the ISO in 2001.

is used by many

European Telecommunications Standards Institute The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is an independent, not-for-profit, standardization organization operating in the field of information and communications. ETSI supports the development and testing of global technical ...

(ETSI) standards for digital TV and mobile TV. The

Open Geospatial Consortium The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international voluntary consensus standards organization that develops and maintains international standards for geospatial content and location-based services, sensor web, Internet of Things, Geographi ...

provides a Binary XML Encoding Specification (currently a

Best Practice A best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to alternatives because it tends to produce superior results. Best practices are used to achieve quality as an alternative to mandatory standards. 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. 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 ...

); or using an existing standard such as

ASN.1 Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) is a standard interface description language (IDL) for defining data structures that can be serialized and deserialized in a cross-platform way. It is broadly used in telecommunications and computer networ ...

. Traditional compression methods, however, offer only the advantage of reduced file size, without the advantage of decreased parsing time or random access.

/PER forms the basis of Fast Infoset, which is one binary XML standard. There are also hybrid approaches (e.g.,

VTD-XML Virtual Token Descriptor for eXtensible Markup Language (VTD-XML) refers to a collection of cross-platform XML processing technologies centered on a non-extractive XML, "document-centric" parsing technique called Virtual Token Descriptor (VTD). ...

) that attach a small index file to an XML document to eliminate the overhead of parsing.

Binary XML efforts

Projects and file formats using binary XML include: *

Standard, from the

ISO The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Me ...

, developed by the

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...

working group * Fast Infoset, a standard published by ISO/IEC and ITU-T *

(EXI) W3C Recommendation, based on work by Efficient XML from AgileDelta, Inc. * Extensible Binary Meta Language (EBML) from

Matroska Matroska (styled Matroška) 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 ...

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

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

; the implementation included in .NET Framework 3.0 and later.
Binary Markup Language
(BML) Other projects that have functionality related to (or competing with) binary representations include: *

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 that communicate with each other over a network or for storing data. The method involves an ...

from Google *

Apache Thrift Thrift is an IDL (interface definition language, Interface Definition Language) and Binary protocol, binary communication protocol used for defining and creating service (systems architecture), services for programming languages. It was developed ...

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, ...

from OMG * Apache Avro for Big Data * Android application package uses an undocumented binary XML format; the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

is open and well-commentated.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Binary Xml XML Data serialization formats

Binary representation

Binary XML efforts

See also

References