On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 12:18:50AM +0200, Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
> 
> Am Donnerstag, den 23.10.2008, 23:05 +0200 schrieb Mauricio Fernandez:
> > I have been working for a while on a self-describing, compact, extensible
> > binary protocol, along with an OCaml implementation which I intent to release
> > in not too long.
> > 
> > It differs from sexplib and that bin-prot in two main ways:
> > * the data model is deliberately more limited, as the format is meant to be
> >   de/encodable in multiple languages.
> > * it is extensible at several levels, achieving both forward and backward
> >   compatibility across changes in the data type
> > 
> > You can think of it as an extensible Protocol Buffers[1] with a richer data
> > model (albeit not in 1:1 accordance with OCaml's for the above mentioned
> > reason).
> 
> Have you looked at ICEP (see zeroc.com)? It has bindings for many
> languages, even for Ocaml (http://oss.wink.com/hydro/).
> 
> It is, however, not self-describing. Anyway, you may find there ideas
> for portability.

I've just taken a quick look at the manual (in particular, the definition of
the Slice language and the Data Encoding section of the Ice protocol). Even
though it solves a different problem, it looks very interesting --- both as a
source of inspiration, as you say, and for its intended use as a middleware
technology.  Thanks a lot for the reference.

Regards,
-- 
Mauricio Fernandez  -   http://eigenclass.org