[erlang-questions] BERT encoding and WebSocket

[Joe Armstrong]

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 6:57 AM, Mike Oxford <moxford@REDACTED> wrote:
> A truly stripped down binary-protocol can be faster and leaner than JSON,
> but for web-work JSON is highly preferred.  Why?  Javascript has zero tools
> for handling binary data and PHP's binary support is all but non-existent.
> mochijson2 is a good library for converting between erlang terms and JSON.
>
> JSON is more word-y and takes up more bandwidth, sure, but most people
> aren't uber-optimizing for 56k modems these days (exception: mobile.)

Right but "exception:mobile" is the kicker - we're running out of
mobile bandwidth real fast.
demand for for mobile bandwidth is growing at a faster rate than
supply - and supply
is limited by *physics* - as sales of smartphones increase there is
more and more
pressure on the net - 3G sucks in most city-centers.

This means that mobile apps must "weight every byte on golden scales"

JSON is *not* highly preferred here - I'd use UINT8INT arrays and
huffman encoding
and caching if the content is to be future proof. It's not much good
making a cross platform
app that just won't run in a congested mobile net ...

/Joe



> The ease of using JSON in Ruby + PHP + javascript + iOS + Android more than
> makes up for the wire overhead.   And it's easier to read tcpdump/pcaps, use
> existing tools like curl and read native traces/dumps.
>
> If you're just using backend server-server, BERT is easier and protobufs is
> smaller/more efficient.
>
> I use JSON on the front, BERT on the back with protobufs for talking to
> Riak.  I deprecated AMF and a custom binary protocol on the front due to the
> above reasons.
>
> -mox
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 9:20 AM, Heinz N. Gies <heinz@REDACTED> wrote:
>>
>> I was thinking about the same,
>> after some testing I went to use JSON it was smaller then BERT+base64 for
>> my cases without it I had problems with transmissions.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Heinz
>> --
>> Heinz N. Gies
>> heinz@REDACTED
>> http://licenser.net
>>
>> On Apr 10, 2012, at 04:26, ngocdaothanh wrote:
>>
>> > What is the best way to use BERT encoding (http://bert-rpc.org/) with
>> > WebSocket?
>> >
>> > BERT is binary but WebSocket does not support binary at this moment.
>> > Should I use base64 to encode BERT binary to normal string? Base64 has
>> > 33% overhead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64). How much space can
>> > BERT save compared to JSON?
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