Ser2xml

A nice thing to have is an ant task to convert from .ser to .xml and back.



* good for debugging

* it could be used for axis - too many times existing classes have problem with

the serialization scheme based on getters.

* this would allow same code to work with both RMI/IIOP and soap

* it may solve some of the .ser problem - like versioning and unreadability.



The serial file does not include a lot of metadata - that is part of the class file. Storing this metadata ( only the field descriptors, to allow interpreting the .ser file ) would also be nice.



The speed of reading/writting .ser file is almost 2x of SAX - and involves almost no garbage ( compared with hundreds of objects per request ). The size is also much smaller - assuming transient is used correctly.



There are many bad things in RMI - and in java.io.Serialization, but some things are also very nice.