Re: [Boost-users] Re: Is there a binary serialization class ?

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-09-03 13:25:05

On Fri, 3 Sep 2004 15:02:43 -0300, Mauricio Gomes wrote
> On Sep 3, 2004, at 1:06 PM, Jeff Garland wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> But if CDR is not used then do you guys know what is ?
> 
> Because, please correct me if I am wrong (I am just reading and 
> learning with this thread), isn't this functionality (machine 
> agnostic serialization) crucial to frameworks like ACE and to 
> specifications like CORBA and to any cross-platform network 
> communication library ?

Yes, CDR is Common Data Representation and it is part of the CORBA standard. 
It deals with things like byte swapping etc.  ACE has a CDR Stream
implementation that is used to stream data for the TAO CORBA implementation.  

The serialization library uses a 'local' binary format so the binary archive
cannot necessarily be ported to another machine or even possibly another
compiler on the same machine.  This is likely a much more performant option
than a CDR binary archive for those applications that use a single
machine/compiler.  So, the bottom line is, the serialization library can be
extended to support CDR, but as far as I know no one is working on actually
doing it...

Jeff