Summary

In this chapter, we defined what serialization and deserialization are, we saw the goals we try to achieve with them, and we talked about where Protobuf stands. We saw that there are a lot of trade-offs when choosing a data format that fulfills all the requirements. We also saw that, in serialization, we do not only care about one criterion; rather, there are many criteria that we need to look at. And finally, we saw the advantages and disadvantages of Protobuf as a data format.

In the next chapter, we will talk about the Protobuf language and all its concepts. We will see how to define types, import other schemas, and other language concepts.