Hello S Ahmed,
There are many similarities but also a number of differences between
Apache Thrift (AT) and Google Protocol Buffers (GPB). Both are great
projects and in many situations either will solve your problem. Here are
some of the differences:
- From a development stand point, AT is a top level open source Apache
Software Foundation project contributed to by anyone who adds an
approved patch. GPB is an open source project controlled and maintained
by Google.
- AT supports over 15 programming languages directly. GPB supports
C++/Java/Python directly, other language implementations are supplied by
3rd parties (there are many). In both cases different languages support
a varying range of features.
- AT and GPB are both IDL based serialization frameworks. Both IDLs
support the declaration of types and services. AT includes a complete
RPC framework which allows you to construct RPC clients and servers with
a few lines of hand written code. GPB generates RPC stubs but does not
come with an RPC implementation. There are many 3rd party RPC frameworks
built around GPB, each supporting one or more languages and offering a
range of features. Many of these 3rd party projects are based on other
projects such as Apache MINA or Boost.Asio.
- AT supplies three IDL container types, map, list and set. GPB
defines repeating groups with a repeated field specification. Both can
manage the same serialization chores but the container approach operates
at a higher level of abstraction which may mean fewer lines of user code
(e.g a std::map or HashMap can be handed directly to AT for serialization).
- GPB encoding and AT Compact Protocol encoding both use varints to
reduce the size of serialized data on the wire. GPB supports unsigned
and fixed integers, AT does not, in rare situations this can allow GPB
to create a smaller wire footprint. GPB can also compact repeated groups
of integers a bit more efficiently than AT will (with a list, for
instance).
- AT uses a plug in serialization framework with support for JSON,
Binary and Compact serialization. Binary may be faster than other
protocols when the platform is CPU bound and not I/O bound. JSON
provides web tech interop. Custom protocols can also be added to AT
easily. GPB has a single integrated varint based serialization format.
- AT supplies a plug in transport layer allowing you to select memory,
file, network and other end points as serialization targets. AT allows
transports to be layered, supporting framing, compression and buffering.
Custom AT transport are easy to build (e.g. adding support for a
messaging system or providing an encryption layer). GPB serializes data
to/from streams. Implementing language oriented steam interfaces allows
developers to create layers and new end points in GPB solutions. The I/O
models are similar but GPB leans more on the language stream
implementation, where AT uses its cross language Transport framework for
the same jobs. There are pros and cons to both.
There are many other subtle differences but these are the structural
ones as I see it. Hope this helps.
Regards,
Randy
On 7/6/2013 12:53 PM, S Ahmed wrote:
How does thrift differ from say google protocol buffers?
Other than defining your types in and having the types generated in the
various programming languages, how does thrift differ?
It seems that thrift also produces the actual service layer that will wrap
your service and allow for calls to be made, is this correct?
--
Randy Abernethy
Managing Partner, RX-M, LLC
[email protected]
Cell: +1-415-624-6447
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