public inbox for bitcoindev@googlegroups.com
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Matt Whitlock <bip@mattwhitlock•name>
To: bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] BIP70: why Google Protocol Buffers for encoding?
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 14:19:50 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <2109963.TWzmcrtnFv@crushinator> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAN5esQJe0uUm0NyctaBa6WH7_JjeE_OLR=FY_XQWnSr50VRDyA@mail.gmail.com>

Even if a compact binary encoding is a high priority, there are more "standard" choices than Google Protocol Buffers. For example, ASN.1 is a very rigorously defined standard that has been around for decades, and ASN.1 even has an XML encoding (XER) that is directly convertible to/from the binary encoding (BER/DER), given the schema. In practice, I'm mostly agnostic about what encoding is actually used in BIP70, and I wouldn't fault BIP70 for choosing Google Protocol Buffers, but the very existence of Protobuf perplexes me, as it apparently re-solves a problem that was solved 40 years ago by ASN.1. It's as though the engineers at Google weren't aware that ASN.1 existed.


On Monday, 19 January 2015, at 7:07 pm, Richard Brady wrote:
> Hi Gavin, Mike and co
> 
> Is there a strong driver behind the choice of Google Protocol Buffers for
> payment request encoding in BIP-0070?
> 
> Performance doesn't feel that relevant when you think that:
> 1. Payment requests are not broadcast, this is a request / response flow,
> much more akin to a web request.
> 2. One would be cramming this data into a binary format just so you can
> then attach it to a no-so-binary format such as HTTP.
> 
> Some great things about protocols/encodings such as HTTP/JSON/XML are:
> 1. They are human readable on-the-wire. No Wireshark plugin required,
> tcpdump or ngrep will do.
> 2. There are tons of great open source libraries and API for parsing /
> manipulating / generating.
> 3. It's really easy to hand-craft a test message for debugging.
> 4. The standards are much easier to read and write. They don't need to
> contain code like BIP-0070 currently does and they can contain examples,
> which BIP70 does not.
> 5. They are thoroughly specified by independent standards bodies such as
> the IETF. Gotta love a bit of MUST / SHOULD / MAY in a standard.
> 6. They're a family ;-)
> 
> Keen to hear your thoughts on this and very keen to watch the payment
> protocol grow regardless of encoding choice! My background is SIP / VoIP
> and I think that could be a fascinating use case for this protocol which
> I'm hoping to do some work on.
> 
> Best,
> Richard



  parent reply	other threads:[~2015-01-19 19:19 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 37+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-01-19 19:07 Richard Brady
2015-01-19 19:09 ` Jeff Garzik
2015-01-19 19:16   ` Richard Brady
2015-01-19 19:34     ` Jeff Garzik
2015-01-19 19:48   ` Peter Todd
2015-01-19 19:57     ` Richard Brady
2015-01-19 20:03       ` Alan Reiner
2015-01-19 20:06         ` Peter Todd
2015-01-19 20:40         ` Mike Hearn
2015-01-19 20:56           ` Gavin Andresen
2015-01-19 21:22             ` Brian Hoffman
2015-01-19 20:59           ` Ross Nicoll
2015-01-24 13:19           ` Isidor Zeuner
2015-01-25 22:59             ` Ross Nicoll
2015-03-14 15:58             ` Isidor Zeuner
2015-03-24 12:08               ` Jorge Timón
2015-01-19 21:21         ` Jeff Garzik
2015-01-19 19:19 ` Matt Whitlock [this message]
2015-01-19 19:37   ` Mike Hearn
2015-01-19 19:38   ` Jeff Garzik
2015-01-28 12:45 Nicolas DORIER
2015-01-28 13:32 ` Wladimir
2015-01-28 14:00   ` Nicolas DORIER
2015-01-28 15:42     ` Mike Hearn
2015-01-28 16:04       ` Jeff Garzik
2015-01-28 16:52         ` Nicolas DORIER
2015-01-28 17:29           ` Jeff Garzik
2015-01-28 17:45             ` Mike Hearn
2015-01-28 16:19       ` Giuseppe Mazzotta
2015-01-28 16:51         ` Matt Whitlock
2015-01-28 17:02           ` Mike Hearn
2015-01-28 16:34       ` Nicolas DORIER
2015-01-28 16:55         ` Mike Hearn
2015-01-28 17:04           ` Nicolas Dorier
2015-01-28 17:14             ` Mike Hearn
2015-01-28 17:17               ` Angel Leon
2015-01-28 17:27               ` Nicolas DORIER

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=2109963.TWzmcrtnFv@crushinator \
    --to=bip@mattwhitlock$(echo .)name \
    --cc=bitcoin-development@lists$(echo .)sourceforge.net \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox