Re: [boost] [Boost Review] Property Tree Library -- canaboost::serialization expert assess interfacing options

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-04-23 11:15:29

On Sun, 23 Apr 2006 11:01:10 -0400, Eugene Talagrand wrote
 
> Just a note, type tracking can be disabled in the case you described 
> and version tags can be disabled in general. In this case, hand-
> editing becomes feasible: boost::serialization XML archives are what 
> I currently use for config files, though my needs may be more 
> limited than most. You're right that the order of fields matters in 
> boost::serialization, but the order of tags does matter in XML in general.

Well, the order of fields only matters in boost::serialization because all the
current archive classes read in order from the serialized data.  I assure you
that a serialization archive can be built that doesn't depend directly on
order.  Essentially the archive would read and parse the data into an
intermediate structure (property tree might be good :-) and then responds to
the deserialization requests using a mapped based lookup instead of getting
the next data from the file.  The same exact implementation can be used to
make a binding to a database buffer derived from an sql command -- this also
might not have the fields in the same order as the object being serialized. 
Not providing support for this case was one of the reasons that
boost::serialization was orginally rejected.

Jeff