UBF(A) is a simple binary-friendly data format that allows for creating structured data, similar to XML, but much easier to parse. There are actually three levels to UBF, and I think I’m only interested in the first (because I don’t really understand the other two). Don’t be scared off by the Erlang programming language: UBF is just a data format. If I had found this sooner, things might have gone a little differently on a recent project...

In a similarish vein, DIME (Direct Internet Message Encapsulation) is a MIME-like thing for putting binary data chunks together. It doesn’t do structured data the way UBF does, but it lets you agglomerate binary data the way MIME lets you agglomerate textual data.