https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO-532
"I did perform a micro-benchmark of string encoding and decoding, which showed the new methods take about half as long"
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ZOOKEEPER-760 Patrick
We also suffer from Java's poor string conversion performance (ser/deser
of znode paths in the marshalling code), we should take advantage of
this as well:
