Portable Self-Describing Binary Data Streams

Abstract

Storing and transmitting data in binary form is often desirable both to conserve I/O bandwidth and to reduce storage and processing requirements. However, transmission of binary data between machines in heterogeneous environments is problematic. When binary formats are used for long-term data storage, similar problems are encountered with data portability. This paper presents the application that led us to work on this problem, evaluates other standards for binary files and discusses our solution.