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BinaryCIF Format

Data Layout

A CIF file (example) contains:

  • One or more data blocks
  • Each data block has one or more category
  • Each category has one or more field
  • Each field contains data

To represent this hierarchy, the basic shape of the BinaryCIF file defines the following interfaces:

File {
    version: string
    encoder: string
    dataBlocks: DataBlock[]
}

DataBlock {
    header: string
    categories: Category[]
}

Category {
    name: string
    rowCount: number
    columns: Column[]
}

Column {
    name: string
    data: Data
    mask: Data
}

Data {
    data: Uint8Array
    encoding: Encoding[]
}

The most interesting part is the Data interface where the actual data is stored. The interface has two properties: data which is just an array of bytes (the binary data) and an array of encodings that describes the transformations that were applied to the source data to obtain the final binary result stored in the data field.

Additionally, the Column interface defines a mask property used to determine if a certain value is present, not present (. token in CIF), or unknown (? token in CIF).

Currently, BinaryCIF supports these encoding methods:

type Encoding = 
    | ByteArray 
    | FixedPoint
    | IntervalQuantization 
    | RunLength 
    | Delta 
    | IntegerPacking 
    | StringArray

Encoding Methods

Byte Array

Encodes an array of numbers of specified types as raw bytes.

ByteArray {
    kind = "ByteArray"
    type: Int8 | Int16 | Int32 | Uint8 | Uint16 | Uint32 | Float32 | Float64
}

Fixed Point

Converts an array of floating point numbers to an array of 32-bit integers multiplied by a given factor.

FixedPoint {
    kind = "FixedPoint"
    factor: number
    srcType: Float32 | Float64
}

Example

[1.2, 1.23, 0.123] 
---FixedPoint---> 
{ factor = 100 } [120, 123, 12]

Interval Quantization

Converts an array of floating point numbers to an array of 32-bit integers where the values are quantized within a given interval into specified number of discrete steps. Values lower than the minimum value or greater than the maximum are reprented by the respective boundary values.

IntervalQuantization {
    kind = "IntervalQuantization"
    min: number,
    max: number,
    numSteps: number,
    srcType: Float32 | Float64
}

Example

[0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 3, 1.345 ] 
---IntervalQuantization---> 
{ min = 1, max = 2, numSteps = 3 } [0, 0, 1, 2, 2, 1]

Run Length

Represents each integer value in the input as a pair of (value, number of repeats) and stores the result sequentially as an array of 32-bit integers. Additionally, stores the size of the original array to make decoding easier.

RunLength {
    kind = "RunLength"
    srcType: int[]
    srcSize: number
}

Example

[1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3] 
---RunLength---> 
{ srcSize = 6 } [1, 3, 2, 1, 3, 2]

Delta

Stores the input integer array as an array of consecutive differences.

Delta {
    kind = "Delta"
    origin: number
    srcType: int[]
}

Because delta encoding is often used in conjuction with integer packing, the origin property is present. This is to optimize the case where the first value is large, but the differences are small.

Example

[1000, 1003, 1005, 1006] 
---Delta---> 
{ origin = 1000, srcType = Int32 } [0, 3, 2, 1]

Integer Packing

Stores a 32-bit integer array using 8- or 16-bit values. Includes the size of the input array for easier decoding. The encoding is more effective when only unsigned values are provided.

If a value exceeds the maximum value for the 8- or 16- bit type, the maximum value may be output numerous times to add up the value.

IntegerPacking {
    kind = "IntegerPacking"
    byteCount: number
    srcSize: number
    isUnsigned: boolean
}

Example (8-bit type output)

[1, 2, -3, 128] 
---IntgerPacking---> 
{ byteCount = 1, srcSize = 4, isUnsigned = false } [1, 2, -3, 127, 1]

String Array

Stores an array of strings as a concatenation of all unique strings, an array of offsets describing substrings, and indices into the offset array. indices to corresponding substrings.

StringArray {
    kind = "StringArray"
    dataEncoding: Encoding[]
    stringData: string
    offsetEncoding: Encoding[]
    offsets: Uint8Array
}

Example

['a','AB','a'] 
---StringArray---> 
{ stringData = 'aAB', offsets = [0, 1, 3] } [0, 1, 0]

Encoding Process

To encode the data, a sequence of encoding transformations needs to be specified for each input column. For example, to encode the _atoms.id column from the background section, we could specify the encoding as [Delta, RunLength, IntegerPacking]:

[1, 2, 3, 4]
---Delta--->
{ srcType = Int32 } [1, 1, 1, 1]
---RunLength--->
{ srcSize = 4 } [1, 4]
---IntegerPacking--->
{ byteCount = 1, srcSize = 2 } [1, 4]

Little endian is used everywhere to encode the data.

Once each column has been encoded and the File data structure built, the MessagePack format (which is more or less a binary encoding of the standard JSON format) is used to produce the final binary result.

Optionally, the data can be compressed using standard methods such as Gzip to achieve further compression.

Decoding Process

To decode the BinaryCIF data, first the MessagePack data are decoded and then for each column, the binary data are decoded applying inverses of the transformations specified in the encoding array backwards. So to decode the encoding specified by [Delta, RunLength, IntegerPacking] we would first apply the decoding of IntegerPacking, then RunLength, and finally Delta.