Talk:Protocol Buffers

This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Computing: Software Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Software (assessed as Low-importance).

Google Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Google, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Google and related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GoogleWikipedia:WikiProject GoogleTemplate:WikiProject GoogleGoogle articles

Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Google To-do:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : Articles for most of the other products listed here and here.
Assess : All articles in the Category:Unknown-importance Google articles and Category:Unassessed Google articles using the project's assessment scale
Expand : Google Mapathon, Google Talkback
Maintain : This WikiProject
Merge : Google mobile services into List of Google products
Stubs : Category:Stub-Class Google articles and Category:Google stubs
Update : List of features in Android and Gmail interface#Product integration. Update logos of Google Marketing Platform products
Other :
- Add more stuff to this to do list if you like! (click here...)
- create:
- Help the Google article for a good article status
- Improve the Outline of Google
- Get more members using :
{{subst:Wikipedia:WikiProject Google/Invite Members}}
- Infobox Images with transparent areas needing a different background color

Apache Thrift and RPC protocol stack.

"Protocol Buffers" refers to a specification, it is not a plural entity. The article keeps referring to it in the plural ("are" instead of "is" etc.) To avoid this error and make the text less awkward, it would help to use the very common nickname "Protobuf", introduce that in the first sentence, then use that throughout the article. That would give sentences like "Protobuf is very similar to Apache Thrift" instead of the awkward "Protocol Buffers are very similar to Apache Thrift". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.196.196.7 (talk) 18:05, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have seen the main page and have got no idea why Google itself refers to it in the plural, maybe a singular Protocol Buffer is itself a spec? I don't know. Chininazu12 (talk) 03:49, 17 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In the following paragraph, to which protocol does the word "it" refers to? Protocol Buffers or Apache Thrift?

Protocol Buffers are very similar to the Apache Thrift protocol (used by Facebook for example), except it does not include a concrete RPC protocol stack to use for defined services. — Preceding unsigned comment added by פרה (talk • contribs) 06:43, 21 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This question is answerable by of course examining the published implementation, but more relevantly also in the response by Kenton Varda which is already given in the references section. Hence I updated the main article to clarify. 79.97.229.113 (talk) 22:37, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Clarifying

Doesn't it mean that the protocol is simple transpier from one source code to another? DAVRONOVA.A. ✉ ⚑ 22:59, 16 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It would be correct to say that protoc is an example of a transpiler. Protocol Buffers itself is a data format like JSON or XML. I think the article's wording is fine. Chaparral2J (talk) 17:16, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]