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Date: Sat, 14 May 2005 15:56:18 -0700
From: Jeremy Boynes <jboynes@apache.org>
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Subject: Re: API and serialization compatibility, was: Build Failure
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Dain Sundstrom wrote:
> Tim,
> 
> As you point out, the problem of serialization is far reaching.   
> Basically, we need to get every project included in Geronimo to buy  
> into serialization stability, and to my knowledge there are no  projects 
> in Geronimo that today have committed to this.  In addition,  Geronimo 
> itself is does not support serialization stability, and if  we choose 
> this path, we must clean up our own house by verifying  every 
> serializable class is set up for upward compatible  serialization.  This 
> is by no means an easy task, but I think before  we ask something of 
> other project we are aware of the effort involved  in what we are asking.
> 
> Alternatively, we could choose to do like Sun did with swing and give  
> up on serialization and use an xml based storage mechanism based on  
> Java Beans rules.
> 

The issue is not the implementation (serialization vs. XML) but the 
compatibility of the information set between versions.

As David Jencks has pointed out elsewhere, we do not need every project 
to commit to serialization stability everywhere, just in the classes 
that are being used in GBean attributes. If they do great; if they don't 
we just don't use those classes as attribute values and handle 
reconstruction ourselves.

And after all, one requirement Sun place on a JavaBean is that it is 
Serializable.

--
Jeremy