Summary
In this chapter, we covered the basics of serialization and illustrated how our data structures could be encoded using various serialization protocols, including XML, JSON, and Protocol Buffers. You learned about the differences between the most popular serialization protocols and their main advantages and disadvantages.
We covered the basics of Protocol Buffers and showed how to define custom data structures in its schema definition language. Then, we used the example code to illustrate how to generate the schema files for the Go language. Finally, we covered the differences in compression efficiency between XML, JSON, and Protocol Buffers.
In the next chapter, we are going to continue using Protocol Buffers and will show how to use it for communication between services.
