Are Google Protocol Buffers a viable way to transfer language neutral messages

Hi there,

during my exploration of the Photon Server SDK and the client side I came across the following question:

How can I implement a language neutral way to transfer messages between servers and servers and clients?

I tried a lot of ways including operations but then I came to a limitation: byte for keys in operation parameters.

With that in mind I searched for a nother solution and finally found Google Protocol Buffers.

This is a great tool for several reasons:

1. One can define messages that can be compiled to many well known languages (c#, c++, Java, Phyton...)
   
2. These messages can be serialized to byte[] and simply added to operationRequest and operationResponse
   
3. One now has 255 messages that can be defined containing messages in messages with unlimited nesting
   
4. Messages are even backward compatible if one decides to add new parameters into a message
   

Does someone have experience with this? Is this a viable way to exchange data?

Oppinions wil be welcome