Now that we have looked at our own data format, let's go ahead and take a look at some fairly popular data formats that are currently out there. This is not an exhaustive look at these, but more an introduction to data formats and what we may find out in the wild.
The first data format that we will look at is a schema-less format. As stated previously, schema-based formats either send ahead of time the schema for data, or they will send the schema with the data itself. This allows, usually, a more compact form of the data to come in, while also making sure both endpoints agree on the way the data will be received. The other form is schema-less, where we send the data in a new form, but all of the information to decode it is done through the specification.
JSON is one of these formats. When we send JSON, we have to encode it and then decode it once we...