BSON is binary JSON
BSON extends JSON to include more data types such as Dates that are not native to JSON.
BSON Characteristics
Lightweight
Small in size, although in certain cases can be more over head then JSON
Traversable
Adds meta info about the data, for example the length of strings to make traversal faster
Efficient
Encoding to BSON and decoding from it is fast due to the use of C data types. For instance integers are stored as 32 or 64 bit integers rather than strings like in JSON so they don’t need to be converted back and fourth from ints to strings