A much later thought, that perhaps speaks to the idea that one size does not fit all: The Apache Arrow project, which is the most ambitious project I know of f

A much later thought, that perhaps speaks to the idea that one size does not fit all: The Apache Arrow project, which is the most ambitious project I know of for sharing data among systems in a performant way, ended up going with a mix of options. Actual data is stored in a project-specific format. When the data are serialized (e.g., to disk or for transport over the wire), headers, schemata, and suchlike are formatted using FlatBuffers. The RPC protocol itself uses Protobuf for the messages.