Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Serialization" in English language version.
Our implementation makes use of a mechanism called "pickles", which will convert between any strongly typed data structure and a representation of that structure suitable for storing in permanent disk files. The operation Pickle.Write takes a pointer to a strongly typed data structure and delivers buffers of bits for writing to the disk. Conversely Pickle.Read reads buffers of bits from the disk and delivers a copy of the original data structure.(*) This conversion involves identifying the occurrences of addresses in the structure, and arranging that when the structure is read back from disk the addresses are replaced with addresses valid in the current execution environment. The pickle mechanism is entirely automatic: it is driven by the run-time typing structures that are present for our garbage collection mechanism. ... (*) Pickling is quite similar to the concept of marshalling in remote procedure calls. But in fact our pickling implementation works only by interpreting at run-time the structure of dynamically typed values, while our RPC implementation works only by generating code for the marshalling of statically typed values. Each facility would benefit from adding the mechanisms of the other, but that has not yet been done.
Serialization, explained below, is an example of a tool for use by objects within an object system for operating on the graph they are embedded in. This seems to require violating the encapsulation provided by the pure object model.
There are many kinds of serializers; they produce very compact data very fast. There are serializers for messaging, for data stores, for marshaling objects. What is the best serializer in .NET?
It lets you take an object or group of objects, put them on a disk or send them through a wire or wireless transport mechanism, then later, perhaps on another computer, reverse the process, resurrecting the original object(s). The basic mechanisms are to flatten object(s) into a one-dimensional stream of bits, and to turn that stream of bits back into the original object(s).
Our implementation makes use of a mechanism called "pickles", which will convert between any strongly typed data structure and a representation of that structure suitable for storing in permanent disk files. The operation Pickle.Write takes a pointer to a strongly typed data structure and delivers buffers of bits for writing to the disk. Conversely Pickle.Read reads buffers of bits from the disk and delivers a copy of the original data structure.(*) This conversion involves identifying the occurrences of addresses in the structure, and arranging that when the structure is read back from disk the addresses are replaced with addresses valid in the current execution environment. The pickle mechanism is entirely automatic: it is driven by the run-time typing structures that are present for our garbage collection mechanism. ... (*) Pickling is quite similar to the concept of marshalling in remote procedure calls. But in fact our pickling implementation works only by interpreting at run-time the structure of dynamically typed values, while our RPC implementation works only by generating code for the marshalling of statically typed values. Each facility would benefit from adding the mechanisms of the other, but that has not yet been done.
Origin of the name 'flattening': Because I want to leave the original 'marshal' module alone, and Jim complained that 'serialization' also means something totally different that's actually relevant in the context of concurrent access to persistent objects, I'll use the term 'flattening' from now on. ... (The Modula-3 system uses the term 'pickled' data for this concept. They have probably solved all problems already, and in a type-safe manner :-)
Our implementation makes use of a mechanism called "pickles", which will convert between any strongly typed data structure and a representation of that structure suitable for storing in permanent disk files. The operation Pickle.Write takes a pointer to a strongly typed data structure and delivers buffers of bits for writing to the disk. Conversely Pickle.Read reads buffers of bits from the disk and delivers a copy of the original data structure.(*) This conversion involves identifying the occurrences of addresses in the structure, and arranging that when the structure is read back from disk the addresses are replaced with addresses valid in the current execution environment. The pickle mechanism is entirely automatic: it is driven by the run-time typing structures that are present for our garbage collection mechanism. ... (*) Pickling is quite similar to the concept of marshalling in remote procedure calls. But in fact our pickling implementation works only by interpreting at run-time the structure of dynamically typed values, while our RPC implementation works only by generating code for the marshalling of statically typed values. Each facility would benefit from adding the mechanisms of the other, but that has not yet been done.
It lets you take an object or group of objects, put them on a disk or send them through a wire or wireless transport mechanism, then later, perhaps on another computer, reverse the process, resurrecting the original object(s). The basic mechanisms are to flatten object(s) into a one-dimensional stream of bits, and to turn that stream of bits back into the original object(s).
Our implementation makes use of a mechanism called "pickles", which will convert between any strongly typed data structure and a representation of that structure suitable for storing in permanent disk files. The operation Pickle.Write takes a pointer to a strongly typed data structure and delivers buffers of bits for writing to the disk. Conversely Pickle.Read reads buffers of bits from the disk and delivers a copy of the original data structure.(*) This conversion involves identifying the occurrences of addresses in the structure, and arranging that when the structure is read back from disk the addresses are replaced with addresses valid in the current execution environment. The pickle mechanism is entirely automatic: it is driven by the run-time typing structures that are present for our garbage collection mechanism. ... (*) Pickling is quite similar to the concept of marshalling in remote procedure calls. But in fact our pickling implementation works only by interpreting at run-time the structure of dynamically typed values, while our RPC implementation works only by generating code for the marshalling of statically typed values. Each facility would benefit from adding the mechanisms of the other, but that has not yet been done.
