##Use JSON.## (Building on Munificent's response, and largely in response to your concerns expressed elsewhere) You've mentioned concern that JSON has the issue of wasting space naming elements, like XML. It doesn't. JSON is built on two structures: name/value pairs (**objects**) and ordered lists of values (**arrays**). XML is built _only_ on name/value pairs. If you think JSON relies on objects you've been reading JSON that's built to be self-descriptive and human-readable, like this (using octal digit pairs to represent single bytes): { "some": ..., "data": ..., "fields": ..., "cars": [ {"name":"greg","cost":8C,"speed":FA,"age":04,"driverID":384FFFFF}, {"name":"ole rustbucket","cost":00,"speed":00,"age":2A,"driverID":04FF54A9} ] } However you also have the option of writing it like this, so long as you know where everything will be (and so can look for index 4, rather than object "cars", to get your list of cars): { [ ..., ..., ..., [["greg",8C,FA,04,384FFFFF],["ole rustbucket",00,00,2A,04FF54A9]], ..., ] } Does it get more concise than just having `[`, `]`, `,` and your values? Well, it does if you're willing to just get closer and closer to a pure binary stream. "cars":{"names":["greg","ole rustbucket"],"stream":8CFA04384FFFFF00002A04FF54A9} or [["greg","ole rustbucket"],8CFA04384FFFFF00002A04FF54A9] Just don't shoot yourself in the leg by optimising too much.