Benchmarks
This page records one local run of the JSON codec and boundary parsing suites. The numbers describe this laptop and toolchain; use them to compare paths and allocations, not as cross-machine performance guarantees.
The suites live in
benchmarks/Reified.Schema.Benchmarks/CodecSuites.fs.
The Benchmarks FAKE target starts
a Release run and forwards any BenchmarkDotNet arguments.
Setup
The measured run used:
- Fedora Linux 44
- Intel Core i5-10310U, 4 physical cores / 8 logical cores
- .NET SDK 10.0.300
- .NET runtime 10.0.8
- F# 10.0
- BenchmarkDotNet 0.15.8
The recorded results use BenchmarkDotNet's ShortRun job: one launch, three warmups, and three measured iterations.
That is enough for a laptop-local directional comparison, but close results should be treated as equivalent until a
longer run shows otherwise.
JSON codec
The codec suite measures Reified.Schema's Json codec on the same aggregate and representation as System.Text.Json: string
against string, and UTF-8 bytes against UTF-8 bytes. The model has seven primitive fields, one nested record, two
collections, and boundary constraints on name and age.
Run them:
BENCHMARK_ARGS='--job short --filter *' dotnet run --project tools/Reified.Build -- --target Benchmarks
| Operation | Reified mean / allocated | System.Text.Json mean / allocated |
|---|---|---|
| Serialize string | 2.42 us / 1,232 B | 2.31 us / 1,136 B |
| Serialize UTF-8 | 2.21 us / 880 B | 2.24 us / 776 B |
| Deserialize string | 5.17 us / 2,912 B | 4.82 us / 2,056 B |
| Deserialize UTF-8 | 4.89 us / 2,520 B | 4.68 us / 2,056 B |
The timings are close enough that this short run does not establish a meaningful throughput winner. Replacing the integer encoder's per-value temporary array with direct UTF-8 formatting reduced Reified serialization by 240 B on this model. The remaining gap is 96–104 B when encoding and 464–856 B when decoding. The UTF-8 APIs avoid the string representation and are the relevant comparison when a payload already arrives as bytes.
Codec compilation is separate from per-payload work:
| Operation | Mean | Allocated |
|---|---|---|
Json.compile for the customer schema |
14.38 us | 14.53 KB |
Compile a codec once and reuse it. Recompiling per payload would dominate the encode path and roughly triple the cost of one decode on this model.
Boundary parsing
The boundary suite compares the trusted codec against full boundary parsing — JsonDocument to Data to Schema.parse with complete path-aware diagnostics:
| Operation | Mean | Allocated |
|---|---|---|
Reified Json.deserializeBytes (trusted, end to end) |
5.10 us | 2.46 KB |
JsonDocument + Data + Schema.parse (boundary, end to end) |
20.06 us | 13.24 KB |
The boundary path was 3.94 times the mean and 5.38 times the managed allocation of trusted UTF-8 decoding in this run. Stage measurements show where that work lands:
| Boundary stage | Mean | Allocated |
|---|---|---|
JSON document to Data |
5.72 us | 3.56 KB |
Schema.parse invalid Data |
13.72 us | 9.23 KB |
Schema.parse valid Data |
14.39 us | 9.68 KB |
The stages are diagnostic measurements, not additive accounting: the end-to-end benchmark measures its own complete operation. The invalid case changes the constrained name to an empty string and measures accumulated error creation.
Scaling cases
The wide-record suite isolates field dispatch and per-field decode state with 24 integer fields:
| Operation | Reified mean / allocated | System.Text.Json mean / allocated |
|---|---|---|
| Serialize UTF-8 | 1.40 us / 320 B | 1.18 us / 232 B |
| Deserialize UTF-8 | 5.94 us / 2,056 B | 3.61 us / 744 B |
The integer formatting change keeps serialization allocation close even as field count grows. Decode allocation grows with Reified's slot-per-field implementation, and linear field-name matching becomes more visible on a wide record.
The list suite measures a root int list without record-field dispatch:
| Items | Reified serialize | System.Text.Json serialize |
Reified deserialize | System.Text.Json deserialize |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 0.346 us / 80 B | 0.454 us / 88 B | 0.507 us / 640 B | 0.862 us / 576 B |
| 1,000 | 30.54 us / 3,952 B | 34.62 us / 3,960 B | 62.17 us / 64,000 B | 65.78 us / 40,464 B |
| 10,000 | 297.97 us / 48,952 B | 264.82 us / 48,960 B | 665.98 us / 640,000 B | 692.21 us / 451,440 B |
Serialization allocation is effectively equal across list sizes after direct integer formatting. The short-run timing lead changes at 10,000 items, so a longer job is required before treating either serializer as the throughput winner. Reified list decoding is competitive on time but allocates more per item.
Conclusion
- For trusted payloads, the compiled codec and
System.Text.Jsonhad similar throughput on this model; Reified allocated more. - For untrusted input, boundary parsing costs more because it builds
Data, checks constraints, and accumulates path-aware diagnostics. - Wide records identify decode slots and field matching as the next optimization target; large lists identify per-item decode allocation as a separate scaling target.
- Compile each codec once and reuse it so compilation stays outside the per-payload path.