Serialization

/ˈproʊtəˌkɒl ˈbʌfərz/

n. “The compact language for talking to machines.”

Protocol Buffers, often abbreviated as Protobuf, is a language- and platform-neutral mechanism for serializing structured data, developed by Google. It allows developers to define data structures in a .proto file, which can then be compiled into code for multiple programming languages. This provides a fast, efficient, and strongly-typed way for systems to communicate or store data.

Key characteristics of Protocol Buffers include:

• Compact and Efficient: Uses a binary format that is smaller and faster to parse than text-based formats like JSON or XML.
• Strongly Typed: Enforces data types and structure at compile time, reducing runtime errors.
• Cross-Language Support: Supports multiple languages including Java, Python, C++, Go, and more.
• Extensible: Fields can be added or deprecated over time without breaking backward compatibility.

Here’s a simple example of defining a message using Protocol Buffers:

syntax = "proto3";

message Person {
string name = 1;
int32 age = 2;
string email = 3;
}

After compiling this .proto file, you can use the generated code in your application to serialize and deserialize Person objects efficiently across systems.

In essence, Protocol Buffers is a high-performance, language-agnostic format for structured data that is ideal for communication between services, data storage, and APIs, providing both speed and reliability.

/ˈbeɪsˌsɪkstiˈfɔːr/

[from base (numeral system) + 64 (character set size)]

n.
A binary-to-text encoding scheme used to represent arbitrary binary data in an ASCII string format by translating it into a radix-64 representation. Base64 is commonly used in computing and data transmission systems where binary data must be safely transported over media designed to handle textual data.

Base64 works by dividing binary input into 24-bit groups, which are then split into four 6-bit values. Each 6-bit value is mapped to a printable ASCII character from a fixed set of 64 symbols, typically consisting of uppercase letters (A–Z), lowercase letters (a–z), digits (0–9), and two additional characters (usually + and /). Padding characters (=) may be appended to ensure the output length is a multiple of four characters.

The encoding is not a form of encryption and provides no confidentiality or security on its own. Instead, it is designed for data representation and transport, ensuring compatibility across systems that may not handle raw binary data correctly. As such, Base64 is frequently encountered in contexts such as email attachments (MIME), embedded images in HTML and CSS (data URIs), API payloads (JSON and XML), authentication headers (HTTP Basic Auth), and cryptographic material such as keys and signatures.

While Base64 increases the size of the encoded data by approximately 33%, it remains widely adopted due to its simplicity, reliability, and broad platform support. Variants of Base64 exist, including URL-safe Base64, which replaces certain characters to avoid conflicts in URLs and filenames.

In modern systems, Base64 is best understood as a transport encoding, bridging the gap between binary data and text-based protocols, rather than as a security mechanism.