Comparison report of IPC frameworks

Inter-Process Communication (IPC) frameworks provide a way for different processes to communicate with each other in a distributed system.

A comparison report of Inter-Process Communication (IPC) frameworks would examine and compare the different options available for communicating between processes in a distributed system.

Overview of IPC: A brief overview of what IPC is, its importance in distributed systems, and different types of IPC mechanisms (e.g. pipes, message queues, sockets, etc.).

Comparison Criteria: A discussion of the criteria that will be used to compare the different IPC frameworks, such as performance, scalability, security, ease of use, and language support.

Major IPC Frameworks: A detailed analysis and comparison of the major IPC frameworks, including gRPC, Apache Thrift, Apache Avro, and others.

Performance: A discussion of the performance characteristics of each IPC framework, including latency, throughput, and reliability.

Scalability: An examination of the scalability characteristics of each IPC framework, including the ability to handle high levels of traffic, support for load balancing and failover, and ease of integration with other components in the system.

Security: A review of the security features provided by each IPC framework, including encryption, authentication, and authorization.

Ease of Use: An evaluation of the ease of use of each IPC framework, including the complexity of the API, the availability of documentation and support, and the ease of integration with existing systems.

Language Support: A discussion of the language support provided by each IPC framework, including the number of supported languages and the ease of integration with each language.

There are several major IPC frameworks available, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. In this analysis, we will compare the major IPC frameworks, including gRPC, Apache Thrift, Apache Avro, and others.

gRPC: gRPC is a high-performance, open-source framework developed by Google for building modern, fast, and efficient remote procedure call (RPC) APIs. gRPC uses Protocol Buffers as the default data serialization format and supports a variety of programming languages, including C++, Java, Python, and Go. gRPC provides features such as bi-directional streaming, flow control, error handling, and supports both synchronous and asynchronous communication patterns.

Apache Thrift: Apache Thrift is a highly-scalable, cross-language framework for building distributed systems. Thrift supports a variety of programming languages, including C++, Java, Python, and others, and provides an efficient binary data format, as well as a code generation tool to simplify the development process. Thrift also provides support for a variety of transport protocols, including TCP, HTTP, and others, making it highly flexible for different use cases.

Apache Avro: Apache Avro is a data serialization system that provides efficient binary encoding and fast data processing. Avro supports dynamic schema evolution, which makes it easy to change the schema over time without breaking existing clients. Avro provides strong typing and schema evolution, making it well-suited for large-scale data processing.

ZeroMQ: ZeroMQ is a high-performance, asynchronous messaging library that provides a fast and efficient way to communicate between processes. ZeroMQ supports a variety of programming languages and provides a flexible API that can be used to build a variety of communication patterns, including pub-sub, request-reply, and others.

RabbitMQ: RabbitMQ is an open-source message broker that provides a flexible, reliable, and scalable way to communicate between processes. RabbitMQ supports a variety of programming languages and provides a wide range of features, including reliable messaging, publish-subscribe, and others. RabbitMQ is highly scalable and provides built-in support for load balancing and failover, making it well-suited for large-scale distributed systems.

Some of the middleware solutions are "only" architecture descriptions or protocol specifications, such as CORBA, DDS, MQTT or REST. You then need to select an implementation that fits your ecosystem. On the other hand, there are end-to-end frameworks like gRPC, Apache Thrift or Apache Avro, which provide ready-to-use libraries for many different programming languages.

Overall, each IPC framework has its own strengths and weaknesses and the best solution will depend on the specific requirements of the application. gRPC is well-suited for high-performance, low-latency communication, while Apache Thrift is highly scalable and flexible. Apache Avro is well-suited for large-scale data processing, while ZeroMQ is a fast and efficient messaging library. RabbitMQ provides reliable and scalable messaging, making it well-suited for large-scale distributed systems.

Links

Request/Response frameworks

Apache Avro https://avro.apache.org/docs/current/

Apache Thrift https://thrift.apache.org/

CORBA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Object_Request_Broker_Architecture

GraphQL https://graphql.org/

gRPC https://grpc.io/

JSON-RPC https://www.jsonrpc.org/

REST https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer

SOAP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP

Twirp https://twitchtv.github.io/twirp/

Publish/Subscribe Frameworks

AMQP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Message_Queuing_Protocol

CoAP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_Application_Protocol

DDS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Distribution_Service

eCAL https://continental.github.io/ecal/

MQTT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MQTT

XMPP https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Messaging_and_Presence_Protocol

Hybrid communication

D-Bus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Bus

ICE https://zeroc.com/products/ice

SOME/IP http://some-ip.com/

WAMP https://wamp-proto.org/

ZeroMQ https://zeromq.org/

Message serialization libraries

Cap’n Proto https://capnproto.org/

FlatBuffers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlatBuffers

MsgPack https://msgpack.org/

Protobuf https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers

IDLs

Avro IDL https://avro.apache.org/docs/1.9.2/idl.html

Franca IDL https://franca.github.io/franca/

ICE https://zeroc.com/products/ice

OMG IDL https://www.omg.org/spec/IDL/

Protobuf https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers

Thrift IDL https://diwakergupta.github.io/thrift-missing-guide/

WSDL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Services_Description_Language