A binary protocol is a protocol which is intended or expected to be read by a machine rather than a human being, as opposed to a plain text

Plain text

In computing, plain text is the contents of an ordinary sequential file readable as textual material without much processing, usually opposed to formatted text....

 protocol such as IRC, SMTP, or HTTP. Binary protocols have the advantage of terseness, which translates into speed of transmission and interpretation.

There has always been tension between two software development camps that believe new protocols should preferably be text based or binary, respectively. In recent years, with the ready availability of network bandwidth and mass storage, the text based camp has been gaining significant ground - XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

-based systems are nearly ubiquitous - but the debate continues.

Binary protocol is also used in the context of a protocol between exactly two parties, in contrast to a multi-party protocol. Binary protocol, or binary collaboration have been used in the terminology of standards such as EbXML and EDOC . An interface in the UML may also be considered a binary protocol.

External links

• Chapter 5 of "The Tao of Unix Programming" champions textual formats over binary protocols.