Re: How to deal with this kind of serialization compatibility issue?

[George Harley]

Thanks Chris, your experience on this matter is very welcome. Even if it 
does make me feel a little depressed ;-)

Best regards,
George

Chris Gray wrote:
Hi George,

  
I wonder what lessons other class library development teams have learned
in this area ?
    

I guess that our experience from Wonka can be summed up as "serialization is a 
PITA". Most of the time the problem can be solved, you just never know where 
the next one will pop up. We advise our cutomers against using serialization 
as a way to exchange data between VMs - use XML, use Hessian, use anything 
except serialization. That goes for RMI too. I guess it's easier for us to 
take this line in an embedded environment than in the context of, say, J2EE.

Good luck,

Chris