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Avro vs gRPC: What are the differences?

Introduction

Avro and gRPC are two popular technologies used in the field of software development for enabling communication between different systems. While both serve similar purposes, there are some key differences between Avro and gRPC that developers need to be aware of when choosing one over the other. In this article, we will explore these differences in detail.

  1. Serialization Format: Avro uses a compact binary serialization format, which makes it more efficient in terms of network bandwidth and storage space. On the other hand, gRPC uses Protocol Buffers as its serialization format, which offers a balance between efficiency and human readability.

  2. Communication Protocols: Avro primarily relies on the HTTP/REST protocol for communication between different systems. It follows a stateless request-response communication model. In contrast, gRPC uses the HTTP/2 protocol for communication, which is a more efficient and high-performance protocol supporting bidirectional streaming, server push, and other advanced features.

  3. Language Support: Avro supports a wide range of programming languages, including Java, C, C++, Python, Ruby, and more. It provides language-specific APIs for these languages. On the contrary, gRPC has strong support for multiple languages, including Java, C++, Python, Go, Ruby, C#, and more. It also provides language-specific APIs and code generation tools for seamless integration.

  4. Service Definition: Avro uses a schema-based approach for defining the data structures and message formats. It requires a schema to be defined in advance, and both the sender and receiver must be aware of the schema for successful communication. In contrast, gRPC uses a service definition language (Protocol Buffers IDL) to define the operations, messages, and RPC services. It allows for more flexibility and simplifies the process of defining and updating interfaces.

  5. Transport Layer: Avro supports multiple transport protocols, including HTTP/REST, Apache Kafka, and file-based transport. It can adapt to different transport layers based on the specific use cases. On the other hand, gRPC uses the HTTP/2 protocol as the default transport layer. It ensures efficient and low-latency communication over the network.

  6. Open Source Ecosystem: Avro has a well-established open-source ecosystem with a range of tools and libraries available for integration and development. It is part of the Apache Software Foundation and has a strong community support. Meanwhile, gRPC is also an open-source technology backed by Google and has gained significant popularity in recent years. It offers a growing ecosystem with various libraries and frameworks available.

In summary, Avro and gRPC have several key differences. Avro uses binary serialization, primarily relies on HTTP/REST, provides schema-based data definition, and has a wide language support. On the other hand, gRPC uses Protocol Buffers, utilizes HTTP/2, has service definition language support, and offers strong support for multiple languages.

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Pros of Avro
Pros of gRPC
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    • 24
      Higth performance
    • 15
      The future of API
    • 13
      Easy setup
    • 5
      Contract-based
    • 4
      Polyglot
    • 2
      Garbage

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    What are some alternatives to Avro and gRPC?
    JSON
    JavaScript Object Notation is a lightweight data-interchange format. It is easy for humans to read and write. It is easy for machines to parse and generate. It is based on a subset of the JavaScript Programming Language.
    Protobuf
    Protocol buffers are Google's language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible mechanism for serializing structured data – think XML, but smaller, faster, and simpler.
    Apache Thrift
    The Apache Thrift software framework, for scalable cross-language services development, combines a software stack with a code generation engine to build services that work efficiently and seamlessly between C++, Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, Erlang, Perl, Haskell, C#, Cocoa, JavaScript, Node.js, Smalltalk, OCaml and Delphi and other languages.
    Serde
    It is a framework for serializing and deserializing Rust data structures efficiently and generically. The ecosystem consists of data structures that know how to serialize and deserialize themselves along with data formats that know how to serialize and deserialize other things. It provides the layer by which these two groups interact with each other, allowing any supported data structure to be serialized and deserialized using any supported data format.
    MessagePack
    It is an efficient binary serialization format. It lets you exchange data among multiple languages like JSON. But it's faster and smaller. Small integers are encoded into a single byte, and typical short strings require only one extra byte in addition to the strings themselves.
    See all alternatives