NotesSerialization.txt

On Serialization In Java
========================
!! work in progress

In the DEBIE software, different kinds of data are sent bytewise.
To this end, some form of binary serialization is necessary.

As an example, consider the following struct or class:

class Data1 {
	char tag;
	Data2[] f1 = new Data2[8];
	Data3 f2;
}

In C, it is possible to cast the object as is to a byte array,
and then use a pointer in to that array as an iterator object.
The resulting representation is not portable, of course, but
this is not necessarily a problem if the receiver know the
configuration used in the embedded system.

In Java, we need to find a different representation for the
iterator.

If the iterator is a plain index, we might need to use binary
search or potentially very large lookup tables to find out
which field is affected. This is especially true if some of
the serialized instance variables arrays, and we need to avoid
division.

The other choice is to use type specific iterator objects,
e.g. a pair of field index and a sub iterator. This however,
implies that we need to create iterators dynamically.

Other solution??




[1] Ack: discussions with martin_e