Simple Binary Encoding

Simple Binary Encoding (SBE) is a serialization format meant for "high-frequency trading" programs, which are essentially programs that try to get money for their users by making transactions on financial "markets" faster than anyone else. It was designed by the High Performance Working Group in the FIX Protocol Limited organization^[2], and the reference implementation was written by Todd Montgomery and Martin Thompson^[3]. It is meant for low-latency encoding and decoding, and therefore is very similar to Cap'n Proto and FlatBuffers.

SBE schema specification files are written in a subset of XML. The XML files may be compiled to an intermediate representation before code generation.

It is likely that the great majority of SBE use will have in the end been on a network, for financial messages, but there is nothing preventing it from being put to non-financial uses or from being saved to storage.

Software

• Reference implementation
  • Documentation

Specifications

• Specifications on Github
• More versions; some require a login to view

Links

• Marvin Thompson: Simple Binary Encoding
  • A duplicate
• "Hacker News": Simple Binary Encoding
• Cap'n Proto, FlatBuffers, and SBE

References

1. ↑ https://github.com/real-logic/simple-binary-encoding/wiki#user-content-history-of-sbe
2. ↑ https://www.fixtrading.org/standards/sbe/
3. ↑ http://mechanical-sympathy.blogspot.com/2014/05/simple-binary-encoding.html