Should I move big data blobs in JSON or in separate binary connection?

Posted by Amagrammer on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Amagrammer
Published on 2010-04-08T17:07:22Z Indexed on 2010/04/08 17:13 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 352

Filed under:

JSON

|

blobs

QUESTION:

Is it better to send large data blobs in JSON for simplicity, or send them as binary data over a separate connection?

If the former, can you offer tips on how to optimize the JSON to minimize size?

If the latter, is it worth it to logically connect the JSON data to the binary data using an identifier that appears in both, e.g., as "data" : "< unique identifier >" in the JSON and with the first bytes of the data blob being < unique identifier > ?

CONTEXT:

My iPhone application needs to receive JSON data over the 3G network. This means that I need to think seriously about efficiency of data transfer, as well as the load on the CPU.

Most of the data transfers will be relatively small packets of text data for which JSON is a natural format and for which there is no point in worrying much about efficiency.

However, some of the most critical transfers will be big blobs of binary data -- definitely at least 100 kilobytes of data, and possibly closer to 1 megabyte as customers accumulate a longer history with the product. (Note: I will be caching what I can on the iPhone itself, but the data still has to be transferred at least once.) It is NOT streaming data.

I will probably use a third-party JSON SDK -- the one I am using during development is here.

Thanks

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about JSON

Using JSON.NET for dynamic JSON parsing

as seen on West-Wind - Search for 'West-Wind'
With the release of ASP.NET Web API as part of .NET 4.5 and MVC 4.0, JSON.NET has effectively pushed out the .NET native serializers to become the default serializer for Web API. JSON.NET is vastly more flexible than the built in DataContractJsonSerializer or the older JavaScript serializer. The DataContractSerializer… >>> More
Azure Mobile Services: what files does it consist of?

as seen on ASP.net Weblogs - Search for 'ASP.net Weblogs'
Azure Mobile Services is a platform that provides a small set of functionality consisting of authentication, custom data tables, custom API’s, scheduling scripts and push notifications to be used as the back-end of a mobile application or if you want, any application or web site. As described in my… >>> More
Retrieving Json Array

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi, I am trying to retrieve the values from the following url: http://rentopoly.com/ajax.php?query=Bo. I want to get the values of all the suggestions to be displayed in a list view one by one. This is how i want to do... public class AlertsAdd { public ArrayList<JSONObject> retrieveJSONArray(String… >>> More
Deserializing JSON data to C# using JSON.NET

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm relatively new to working with C# and JSON data and am seeking guidance. I'm using C# 3.0, with .NET3.5SP1, and JSON.NET 3.5r6. I have a defined C# class that I need to populate from a JSON structure. However, not every JSON structure for an entry that is retrieved from the web service contains… >>> More
Parsing nested JSON objects with JSON Framework for Objective-C

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have the following JSON object: { "response": { "status": 200 }, "messages": [ { "message": { "user": "value" "pass": "value", "url": "value" } ] } } I am using JSON-Framework (also tried JSON Touch) to parse through this and… >>> More

Related posts about blobs

Type of Blobs

as seen on Geeks with Blogs - Search for 'Geeks with Blogs'
With the release of Windows Azure November 2009 CTP, now we have two types of blobs. Block Blob - This blob type is in place since PDC 2008 and is optimized for streaming workloads. [Max Size allowed : 200GB] Page Blob - With November 2009 CTP release, a new blob type is added which is optimized… >>> More
CBlobResult gives pains.... using Visual C++ 2008... opencv

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
When I type the following code line.. where img_hsv is a Mat image... IplImage abc=img_hsv; // object that will contain blobs of inputImage CBlobResult blobs; // Extract the blobs using a threshold of 100 in the image blobs = CBlobResult(&abc,NULL,100,true); It displays the following error… >>> More
Need to compare blobs in firebird

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hey guys, I need to check on the contents of blobs in my databases (yes, plural, but one problem at a time). In one database, I have about 900 images of potentially varying sizes. I need to check to see if the versioning system that's built into our application is actually correctly replicating… >>> More
Reading,Writing, Editing BLOBS through DataTables and DataRows

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Consider this piece of code: DataSet ds = new DataSet(); SQLiteDataAdapter Da = new SQLiteDataAdapter(Command); Da.Fill(ds); DataTable dt = ds.Tables[0]; bool PositionExists; if (dt.Rows.Count > 0) { PositionExists = true; } else { PositionExists… >>> More
Using Active Objects and BLOBs

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am in a group of people who are creating a Defect Tracking program as a project. We have been using Active Objects and have run into some issues. Currently maximum file size for the blob is approx. 2Mb but we want to be able to increase it up to 2Gb. We currently have been looking at many sites… >>> More