title: graphite pickle vs line receiver
body: <p>There seem to be 2 ways to push metrics to graphite/carbon, </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Line receiver</li>
  <li>Pickle receiver</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>As per the docs <a href="http://graphite.readthedocs.org/en/1.0/feeding-carbon.html" rel="noreferrer">http://graphite.readthedocs.org/en/1.0/feeding-carbon.html</a> pickle is better as it allows batching multiple metrics in a single call.</p>
  
  <p>But one can batch metrics to the line receiver as well by separating the metrics using newline. For ex:</p>
  
  <pre><code>echo -e "local.random.diceroll4 40 `date +%s`\nlocal.random.diceroll5 400 `date +%s`" | nc localhost 2003
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So given the additional overhead of pickling/un-pickling the metrics, when and why is the pickle receiver better than the line receiver? </p>