Two representations of the same data structures.

Ion text is like JSON, in fact all JSON is valid ion text. Ion text has comments, trailing commas, dates, and unquoted keys. It's a really good alternative to JSON, YAML, or TOML.

Ion binary is compact and fast to parse. Values are length prefixed so the parser can skip over unneeded fields or structs, saving time parsing and memory allocated. Common string values, like struct keys and enum values, are given numeric ids and stored once in a header table.