index.html

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8">
    <meta name="google-site-verification" content="mgXKU4eJahd8ymdcdK9W5XHEzt0GmpovTXx2saqSQEk">
    <title>BSON (Binary JSON) Serialization</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/reset-fonts-grids.css" type="text/css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/style.css" type="text/css">
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="doc" class="yui-t7">
      <div id="hd">
        <h1><a href="#/">BSON</a></h1>
        <div id="graphic">
          <div id="right-brace" class="brace">}</div>
          <div id="bits">
            01000010<br>
            01010011<br>
            01001111<br>
            01001110
          </div>
          <div id="left-brace" class="brace">{</div>
        </div>
      </div>
      <div id="bd">
        <div class="yui-g intro">
          <div class="yui-u first">
            <p><abbr title="Binary JSON">BSON</abbr>, short for Bin&shy;ary <a href="http://json.org"><abbr title="JavaScript Object Notation">JSON</abbr></a>, is a bin&shy;ary-en&shy;coded seri&shy;al&shy;iz&shy;a&shy;tion of JSON-like doc&shy;u&shy;ments. Like JSON, BSON sup&shy;ports the em&shy;bed&shy;ding of doc&shy;u&shy;ments and ar&shy;rays with&shy;in oth&shy;er doc&shy;u&shy;ments and ar&shy;rays. BSON also con&shy;tains ex&shy;ten&shy;sions that al&shy;low rep&shy;res&shy;ent&shy;a&shy;tion of data types that are not part of the JSON spec. For ex&shy;ample, BSON has a Date type and a BinData type.</p>
            <p>BSON can be com&shy;pared to bin&shy;ary inter&shy;change for&shy;mats, like <a href="http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/">Proto&shy;col Buf&shy;fers</a>. BSON is more "schema-less" than Proto&shy;col Buf&shy;fers, which can give it an ad&shy;vant&shy;age in flex&shy;ib&shy;il&shy;ity but also a slight dis&shy;ad&shy;vant&shy;age in space ef&shy;fi&shy;ciency (BSON has over&shy;head for field names with&shy;in the seri&shy;al&shy;ized data).</p>
          </div>
          <div class="yui-u">
            <p>BSON was de&shy;signed to have the fol&shy;low&shy;ing three char&shy;ac&shy;ter&shy;ist&shy;ics:</p>
            <ol>
              <li>
                <h3>Lightweight</h3>
                <p>Keep&shy;ing spa&shy;tial over&shy;head to a min&shy;im&shy;um is im&shy;port&shy;ant for any data rep&shy;res&shy;ent&shy;a&shy;tion format, es&shy;pe&shy;cially when used over the net&shy;work.</p>
              </li>
              <li>
                <h3>Traversable</h3>
                <p>BSON is de&shy;signed to be tra&shy;versed eas&shy;ily. This is a vi&shy;tal prop&shy;erty in its role as the primary data rep&shy;res&shy;ent&shy;a&shy;tion for <a href="http://www.mongodb.org">Mon&shy;goDB</a>.</p>
              </li>
              <li>
                <h3>Efficient</h3>
                <p>En&shy;cod&shy;ing data to BSON and de&shy;cod&shy;ing from BSON can be per&shy;formed very quickly in most lan&shy;guages due to the use of C data types.</p>
              </li>
            </ol>
          </div>
        </div>
        <div id="buttons">
          <span class="button" id="first-button">
            <a class="nav spec" href="spec.html">specification</a>
          </span>
          <span class="button">
            <a class="nav lib" href="implementations.html">implementations</a>
          </span>
          <span class="button">
            <a class="nav faq" href="faq.html" rel="address:faq">FAQ</a>
          </span>
          <span class="button">
            <a class="nav" href="https://groups.google.com/group/bson">discussion</a>
          </span>
        </div>
      <div id="ft">
        <div>
          <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/" id="cc" class="ro"><span>Creative Commons &mdash; CC0</span></a>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>

<script type="text/javascript">
  var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
  document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
  try {
  var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-7301842-4");
  pageTracker._trackPageview();
  } catch(err) {}
</script>
</body>
</html>