I don&#x27;t see how using JSON&#x2F;XML or not has anything to do with the problem of communicating changes. The problem isn&#x27;t the underlying serialization format, but what kind of schema validation, versioning and type definitions you build around it and how you make sure that all consumers know or may find out about it. Interestingly you mention Thrift, which can seamlessly use both XML and JSON as its underlying protocol.