CBOR is a schema-less binary format. JSON BinPack supports both schema-less (like CBOR) and schema-driven (with JSON Schema) modes. Even on the schema-less mode, JSON BinPack is more space-efficient than CBOR. See https://benchmark.sourcemeta.com for a live benchmark and https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.12799 for a more detailed academic benchmark
Thanks for linking the benchmarks. I appreciate the work on shaving additional bytes especially in cases where every byte matters. Real savings seem to be in the schema-driven mode. Comparing a "realistic", schemaless payload for a general storage use-case (eg. the config examples), it looks pretty even with CBOR. E: my bad, BinPack is getting more efficient with larger payloads https://benchmark.sourcemeta.com/#jsonresume
Exactly! The real hardcore savings will always be when you pass a schema, as JSON BinPack uses that to derive smarter encoding rules.
However, schema-less is very useful too. The idea with supporting both is that clients can start with schema-less, without bothering with schemas, and already get some space-efficiency. But once they are using JSON BinPack, they can start incrementally adding schema information on the messages they care about, etc to start squeezing out more performance.
Compare that with i.e. Protocol Buffers, which pretty much forces you to use schemas from the beginning and it can be a bit of a barrier for some projects, mainly at the beginning.
As a note, while cbor is schemaless, there do exist tools to make it work with schemas. In rust cborium will generate rust types from a json schema that serde can use.
CBOR is a schema-less binary format. JSON BinPack supports both schema-less (like CBOR) and schema-driven (with JSON Schema) modes. Even on the schema-less mode, JSON BinPack is more space-efficient than CBOR. See https://benchmark.sourcemeta.com for a live benchmark and https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.12799 for a more detailed academic benchmark
Thanks for linking the benchmarks. I appreciate the work on shaving additional bytes especially in cases where every byte matters. Real savings seem to be in the schema-driven mode. Comparing a "realistic", schemaless payload for a general storage use-case (eg. the config examples), it looks pretty even with CBOR. E: my bad, BinPack is getting more efficient with larger payloads https://benchmark.sourcemeta.com/#jsonresume
Exactly! The real hardcore savings will always be when you pass a schema, as JSON BinPack uses that to derive smarter encoding rules.
However, schema-less is very useful too. The idea with supporting both is that clients can start with schema-less, without bothering with schemas, and already get some space-efficiency. But once they are using JSON BinPack, they can start incrementally adding schema information on the messages they care about, etc to start squeezing out more performance.
Compare that with i.e. Protocol Buffers, which pretty much forces you to use schemas from the beginning and it can be a bit of a barrier for some projects, mainly at the beginning.
As a note, while cbor is schemaless, there do exist tools to make it work with schemas. In rust cborium will generate rust types from a json schema that serde can use.
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