binary protocols v. text protocols

Question

does anyone have a good definition for what a binary protocol is? and what is a text protocol actually? how do these compare to each other in terms of bits sent on the wire?

Answer 1

Text protocol can be self-explanatory and extensive. It's self-explanatory because the message includes the field names just in the message itself. You cannot understand which value means in the message of binary protocol if you don't refer to the protocol specification.

It's extensive means HTTP as a text protocol just make simple rules but you can extend the data structure by freely adding new headers or by changing the content type to transport different payloads. And the headers are the meta data and have the capability of negotiation and automatically adaption.