On Ruby

At work, we're moving from XML to protocol buffers. While we're mostly a Java shop, the operations/sysadmin team I'm on does a lot of Ruby. I was interested in how we might use the same technology for some of our stuff. After a bit of looking, I found two libraries that looked mature enough to investigate:

• ruby-protobuf
• ruby-protocol-buffers

ruby-protobuf, by MATSUYAMA Kengo (@macks_jp), was straightforward to install and use. It has a good online tutorial and the redme has all I needed to get started.
ruby-protocol-buffers, by Brian Palmer was also easy to install and use. It seems a bit lacking in the online documentation, but does have some examples to follow. (If Brian's name rings a bell, it might be because I interviewed him some time ago about winning a programming contest sponsored by Mozy's former incarnation.)
I started out with a very simple proto file:

package bench;
message Person {
 required string name = 1;
 required int32 id = 2;
 optional string email = 3;
}

I compiled this with rprotoc for ruby-protobuf and with ruby-protoc for ruby-protocol-buffers. This generated the following (which I edited lightly). For ruby-protof:

### Generated by rprotoc. DO NOT EDIT!
### <proto file: bench.proto>
# package bench;
#
# message Person {
#  required string name = 1;
#  required int32 id = 2;
#  optional string email = 3;
# }
require 'protobuf/message/message'
require 'protobuf/message/enum'
require 'protobuf/message/service'
require 'protobuf/message/extend'
module Bench1
 class Person1 < ::Protobuf::Message
  defined_in __FILE__
  required :string, :name, 1
  required :int32, :id, 2
  optional :string, :email, 3
 end
end

for ruby-protocol-buffer

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
# Generated by the protocol buffer compiler. DO NOT EDIT!
require 'protocol_buffers'
# Reload support
Object.__send__(:remove_const, :Bench2) if defined?(Bench2)
module Bench2
 # forward declarations
 class Person2 < ::ProtocolBuffers::Message; end
 class Person2 < ::ProtocolBuffers::Message
  required :string, :name, 1
  required :int32, :id, 2
  optional :string, :email, 3
  gen_methods! # new fields ignored after this point
 end
end

Then I pulled out the statistical benchmarking I wrote about a while ago (Since no one else has taken the bait, maybe I should bundle up a gem for that.). Instead of quoting the whole thing at you, here are the pertinent loops. For ruby-protobuf:

msg = Bench1::Person1.new(:name => idx.to_s,
             :id => idx,
             :email => idx.to_s)
msg_str = msg.serialize_to_string
msg == msg.parse_from_string(msg_str)

for ruby-protocol-buffer:

msg = Bench2::Person2.new(:name => idx.to_s,
             :id => idx,
             :email => idx.to_s)
 msg == Bench2::Person2.parse(msg.to_s)

And here are the results:

$ rvm 1.9.2
$ ruby -v
ruby 1.9.2p0 (2010年08月18日 revision 29036) [i686-linux]
$ time ruby ProtoBufBench
testing ruby-protobuff against ruby-protocol-buffer
The deviation in the deltas was 0.021731
The mean delta was 0.198301
max = 0.241761921640842 :: min = 0.154839326146633
ruby-protocol-buffer was better
real1m50.672s
user1m50.599s
sys0m0.092s
$ rvm 1.8.7
$ ruby -v
ruby 1.8.7 (2010年08月16日 patchlevel 302) [i686-linux]
$ time ruby ProtoBufBench
testing ruby-protobuff against ruby-protocol-buffer
The deviation in the deltas was 0.009414
The mean delta was -2.205984
max = -2.18715483485056 :: min = -2.22481263341116
There's no statistical difference
real3m8.131s
user3m7.996s
sys0m0.056s

I didn't try compiling the c extension for ruby-protocol-buffers, and I haven't tried any more involved .proto files yet. I'll work on those in the next couple of days and post results as I see them.

Clayton O'Neill said...

I'd definitely recommend using the java protobuf stuff from JRuby. It works really well and the performance is going to be dramatically better. We've been doing a lot of this lately and we're really happy with it.

3/24/11, 6:08 PM

gnupate said...

@Clayton, thanks for the recommendation. I'll have to give that a try.

3/24/11, 6:27 PM

jarib said...

Would be interesting to compare with beefcake as well.

3/26/11, 2:42 PM

gnupate said...

@jarib, thanks for the pointer to beefcake. I'll be checking it out.

3/26/11, 2:46 PM

Nitin Singh said...

Have you try compiling the c extension for ruby-protocol-buffers?

12/23/14, 8:38 AM

gnupate said...

I haven't tried the c-extension. Have you? What was your experience?

12/23/14, 8:59 AM

Anonymous said...

No I have not. I m trying to do somethin like this in ruby
node::Buffer::Data(val) node::Buffer::Length(val); node::Buffer::HasInstance(value)

Above code is in node.js for c extension. I am looking for any buffer class that I can use to do similar.

12/23/14, 9:19 AM