1. A method for applying an update to a communication protocol in a software application executed by a computing device, the method comprising: receiving, by the computing device, a protocol definition corresponding to a communication protocol, wherein the received protocol definition indicates positions of data elements within data objects corresponding to the communication protocol; determining, by the computing device, that the received protocol definition differs from a previous protocol definition corresponding to the communication protocol; based on the determined difference between the received protocol definition and the previous protocol definition, creating, by the computing device, a machine-executable object parser based on the received protocol definition, wherein the machine-executable object parser is accessible to a software application executed by the computing device; receiving, by the software application, a data object corresponding to the communication protocol; and executing, by the computing device, the machine-executable object parser to parse at least a portion of the data elements in the data object received by the software application.