[Boost-users] cross-platfrom binary serialization?

From: Ákos Maróy (akos_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-08-08 06:01:10

Hi,

I'm working on a cross-platform project, where we're serializing data 
and sending it over TCP, using boost::serialization and boost::asio. As 
the data is quite big, and is mainly numeric, binary serialization 
provides a nice advantage over XML-based serialization, both in terms of 
performance and data size.

But, I've found that the serialized data itself is not cross-platform. 
E.g. if I have  a simple app, that sends serialized data via a TCP 
connection, it works fine as long as both ends of the connection are on 
the same platform (say both are Linux x86_64, or both are Windows XP). 
but they don't interact with each other - the data sent by one platform 
is not accepted 'as is' by the other.

I wonder what provisions have to be done to achieve binary serialization 
that would work in such a context?

Akos