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• As a means to define an efficient binary serialization format
• As a means to reuse code-generators for skeleton-code to work with VSS data in various languages.

Alternatives:

• AVRO?
• Comparison of data serialization fromats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_data-serialization_formats

Useful links:

• Main site for Protocol Buffers: https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/
• Protobuf 3 reference specification
• Tutorials (Google) https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/tutorials
• Comparison of data serialization formats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_data-serialization_formats

Concerns

• How to decide on groups of parts
• You have to provide all sub-branches even if only interested in one leaf - especially where a branch has both sub-branches and leaves, this is unexpected.
• Some groups make sense always, e.g. GPS.{Lat,Long}
• optionality is supported in Protobuf.  Should all branches/leaves even be optional in the message definition?

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