Compare relative performance of various serialization and deserialization tools.
Here is the list of benchmarked tools:
- FasterXML's Jackson JSON v2.5.1
- FasterXML's Jackson JSON with Afterburner v2.5.1
- Google's Protocol Buffers v2.6.0
- You will need the Google Protocol Buffers compiler installed. Additionally, the path for
protocis hard-coded to/usr/local/bin/protoc. If you use Microsoft Windows or have installed the compiler to a non-standard location then you will need to update this path in pom.xml. - Benchmarks are collected via unit tests. Run the "test" lifecycle in order to collect your own benchmarks.
The following table shows timings for serialization and deserialization of 1,000 TestObject instances populated with random data. Each batch of 1,000 instances was performed 100 times in order to calculate average, minimum, and maximum times as well as variance around the average to gauge how consistent the serialization and deserialization processes are for the various frameworks.
The latest benchmarks were collected on June 25, 2015 using Java 1.8.0_40 and the following platform:
- CPU: 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7, 4 cores
- RAM: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
- Disk: Apple SSD
- OS: Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 on MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)
| Framework | Average Time (ms) | Min. Time (ms) | Max. Time (ms) | Variance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jackson JSON 2.6.0-rc2 | 130 | 122 | 169 | -0.06% / +0.30% |
| Jackson Afterburner JSON 2.6.0-rc2 | 118 | 115 | 131 | -0.03% / +0.11% |
| Protocol Buffers 3.0.0-alpha-3 | 41 | 38 | 103 | -0.07% / +1.51% |
| Framework | Average Time (ms) | Min. Time (ms) | Max. Time (ms) | Variance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jackson JSON 2.6.0-rc2 | 184 | 179 | 256 | -0.03% / +0.39% |
| Jackson Afterburner JSON 2.6.0-rc2 | 179 | 170 | 233 | -0.05% / +0.30% |
| Protocol Buffers 3.0.0-alpha-3 | 36 | 34 | 72 | -0.06% / +1.00% |
Besides time spent converting data, some analysis was done on the binary data produced after serialization to see if one framework produced significantly smaller data sets either before or after compression.
| Framework | Uncompressed Size (bytes) | GZip Compressed Size (bytes) | Compression Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jackson JSON 2.6.0-rc2 | 33,372 | 13,054 | 2.56 |
| Jackson Afterburner JSON 2.6.0-rc2 | 33,364 | 13,084 | 2.55 |
| Protocol Buffers 3.0.0-alpha-3 | 12,005 | 10,819 | 1.11 |