Google.ProtocolBuffers vs log4net

Log4net is a tool to help the programmer output log statements to a variety of output targets. In case of problems with an application, it is helpful to enable logging so that the problem can be located. With log4net it is possible to enable logging at runtime without modifying the application binary. The log4net package is designed so that log statements can remain in shipped code without incurring a high performance cost. It follows that the speed of logging (or rather not logging) is crucial. At the same time, log output can be so voluminous that it quickly becomes overwhelming. One of the distinctive features of log4net is the notion of hierarchical loggers. Using these loggers it is possible to selectively control which log statements are output at arbitrary granularity. log4net is designed with two distinct goals in mind: speed and flexibility.

Protocol Buffers is a binary serialization format and technology, released to the open source community by Google in 2008. Its primary use is to produce small fast binary representations of a 'message' or object for serialization or transportation. There are various implementations of Protocol Buffers in .NET. This project is a fairly close port of the Google Java implementation. There are two main parts: tools/protoc.exe, which takes the textual representation of the protocol buffer and turns it into a binary representation for use with ProtoGen.exe. tools/ProtoGen.exe, which takes binary representations of protocol buffer descriptors (as generated by the "stock" protoc binary supplied by Google) and creates C# source code. This is only required at build time. lib/*/Google.ProtocolBuffers.dll, which is a supporting library. This is required at execution time. lib/*/Google.ProtocolBuffers.Serialization.dll, a supplementary library that provides extensions for reading and writing protocol buffers to xml, json, and others. LINKS: Project Home - http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-csharp-port Online Help - http://help.protobuffers.net Developer Guide - http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers/docs/overview.html Language Guide - http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers/docs/proto.html.