Introduction to gRPC

Now that we have a basic understanding of how data flows over the network and how Protobuf works, we can enter the gRPC world. In this chapter, the goal is to understand what gRPC is doing on top of HTTP/2 and why Protobuf is the perfect fit for gRPC, and also to see that gRPC is a mature technology backed up by major companies in the industry. This will give us a sense of why gRPC is described as “Protobuf over HTTP/2” and make us confident in using it without fearing that the technology is too new and without community.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

• Major use cases for gRPC
• Advantages of using Protobuf
• The role of gRPC on top of Protobuf