Currently I’m working on a C/C++ cross-platform client/server software. I’m very experienced developer when it comes to low level socket development.
The problem with Berkley sockets/Winsock, is that you always have to make some kind of parser to get things right on the receiver side. I mean, you have to interpret data, and concatenate packets in order to transmit correctly. (packets often get sliced)
Have in mind that the communication is going to be bidirectional. Is pure socket the best way to transmit data nowadays? Would you recommend SOAP, Webservices or another kind of encapsulation to this application?
I can highly recommend Google Protocol Buffers.