Blogs›Google›Serialization Libraries and Performance
Google's development and promotion of serialization libraries focused on memory efficiency and performance. It began with the introduction of FlatBuffers, a library designed for zero-copy deserialization, enabling faster data access and reduced memory overhead. Subsequent developments have included the release of Protocol Buffers as open source, providing a language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible mechanism for serializing structured data, and the introduction of Zopfli for denser data compression. This has now been extended to include official Kotlin support for Protocol Buffers, simplifying their use in Kotlin projects and further enhancing developer productivity and performance.
11/1/2021
This post announces official Kotlin support for Protocol Buffers, providing a dedicated plugin for the Kotlin Gradle build system. This integration simplifies the process of generating Kotlin code from .proto files, enabling developers to leverage Protocol Buffers' performance and efficiency benefits within their Kotlin projects.
4/2/2015
This post introduces FlatBuffers 1.1, highlighting its memory-efficient serialization capabilities and its advantage of zero-copy deserialization. It emphasizes the library's suitability for performance-critical applications and its role in improving data access speed and reducing memory footprint.
2/28/2013
Introduced Zopfli, a new compression algorithm that achieves higher compression ratios than existing methods like gzip and deflate, at the cost of increased computation time. This is presented as a tool for developers to achieve denser data compression, particularly for scenarios where compression time is less critical than the resulting size.
7/7/2008
This post announces the open-sourcing of Protocol Buffers, a language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible mechanism for serializing structured data. It highlights its use within Google for inter-process communication and data storage, emphasizing its efficiency and performance benefits.