Talk:Marshalling (computer science)

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Reference or value

This article needs to be expanded on the difference between marshalling by reference and marshalling by value. Marshalling by value is roughly equivalent to serialization, while marshalling by reference is not. Medinoc (talk) 14:38, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Merger proposal

The concepts of serialization and marshalling seem basically the same. The serialization article says that it is also called marshalling. Conversely, the marshalling article says that marshalling is also called serialization. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Neverdream (talk • contribs) 20:09, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree to merge. Despite what the RFC says, what I (think I) know is that neither serialization nor marshalling save the class definitions in Java. Both save the object state, not the codebase. AFAIK the classes must still be available via a classloader, otherwise deserialization will fail for an unknown type. If there is any difference between the two methods, perhaps it's that marshalling is done via accessor methods while serialization uses some JVM magic to restore the state, even in private fields with no accessors. But that's just for java. Generally I think the two terms are synonymous. Alex.g (talk) 09:01, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If a merger is done, it should merge Serialization into Marshaling. In my opinion (which is just an opinion), Marshaling is simply creating a representation of the data which can be unmarshaled back into the data. Serialization is a subset of marshaling where the representation is defined to be a stream of bits/bytes. By my choice of definition, it is fair to marshal data into a tree or cyclic graph, but cannot be serialized into a cyclic graph. Software which needs to serialize cyclic graphs (such as DEFLATE) seem to talk about first marshaling the data into a cyclic graph, then serializing the graph (as two independent operations).199.46.170.96 (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 17:51, 8 December 2008 (UTC).[reply]

The main difference is that Marshalling involves a client and a server, while serialization is usually done by the same application. When only one application is involved, the data representation needs not to be standarized, a very different situation when marshalling is used. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Robgomez (talk • contribs) 17:35, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Marshalling and serialization are two similar things, but not same. We cannot say that these are two different names of a concept. The article should sketch a clearer line between the two concepts instead of making confusions by merging them in a single. 119.153.71.135 (talk) 14:31, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agreeing with 119.153.71.135 author. One example is Marshalling seems to be used when transforming XML into generated objects (such as with JAXB), but Serialization seems to be used when transforming objects to a byte stream, for example when used with load balancing. See the following technical articles and forums for various opinions from the software development community. Javabeans blog, JGuru forum, Stackoverflow forum, and Java Ranch. Some other related topics, see RMI and SOA. -Legaia (talk) 15:33, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm seeing this from C# perspective, and while these notions may be considered somewhat similar at the higher level, in .NET practice they are two completely different things. Serialization is creating representation of an object for storage or tranfer, and marshaling is used almost exclusively for data interop with unmanaged code. Merging seems like a terrible idea to me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.131.128.45 (talk) 11:18, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely absolutely not the same thing.

Serialization is the process of preparing parallel data for serial transmission.[1] see Serial communication and Parallel communication. That said, I think the term is often misused because there is no analogous term (that I know of) to use when coordinating parallel transmission.

Marshalling is a more abstract concept that does not imply any particular transmission scheme, and may also involve converting data to and from agreed-upon representations (e.g. converting two-byte unicode characters to UTF-8).[2]. Marshalling between CLR-managed memory and unmanaged memory does not require serialization because it is only moving over the (parallel) memory bus.

You guys are completely wrong. You are make language and system specific distinctions, where none exists. The actual method used does not change the meaning of the terms.

Bringing up distributed object technologies like RMI, DCOM, or .NET Remoting will probably just cause confusion, because they are designed to provide Location transparency. While there is no technical reason to serialize an object just to move it from process to process on the local machine, these API's treat local processes exactly the same as a mainframe on the other side of the world. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.190.210.250 (talk) 15:24, 28 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Marshalling in COM

I'm currently reading up on marshalling in COM and by the time I'm finished I will probably be able to write a few paragraphs on how it works. If I choose to do so, should I include it here, on marshalling (computer science), on Component Object Model or as a separate article marshalling in COM? Shinobu (talk) 04:49, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you could put the theory under marshalling and the COM-specific implementation details in COM. Alex.g (talk) 11:10, 22 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, in fact, in spanish the term defined under "Marshalling" is the definition we use for Serialization and is used this way in a lot of books and sources in the Internet —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.241.153.154 (talk) 12:14, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Marshalling - done by the client or the server

I had added the following sentence which was then removed:

'When transporting information in a Client/Server architecture the Client normally handles the marshalling of data; ensuring a decoupling of the Server from the Client.'

This was removed with the comment:

'this sentence makes no sense in the general point of view. clients typically do unmarshalling, servers marshalling. but it is reversed with say ajax, wher the client does marshalling.'

Let me try and restate what I was trying to explain. This is specific to the act of Marshalling data to allow 2 programs to communicate, not marshalling for transport purposes. Consider both a client application and a server application on the same machine. Marshalling is needed to ensure that data in the client is translated into a format that the server understands. The response from the server may then need to be marshalled back into a format that the client natively uses. In this case, both the marshalling and unmarshalling are typically handled by the client. This is 'normal' as this approach allows maximum flexibility regarding the server. The service can be used by any client, the burden of integration (and marshalling data to be able to use the service API) is on the client alone. This de-couples the client and server.

I suspect that the original objection was in interpreting the original comment as being related to a distributed client/server architecture and the Marshalling/Unmarshalling of data for transport purposes. This is not my point (I agree with that point BTW).

Marshalling is not limited to manipulating data for transport purposes, but also for translating from one program's internal representation into another program's internal representation. In this context, typically, the client is responsible for these translations (marshalling/unmarshalling). To me, this is an important point. If someone can state it better or offer some critique in my explanation then please shout out and we'll see if we can get an agreeable explanation put together. Dbnull (talk) 17:49, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why (not) break things

I was reading an article about something call QuickBase and saw something about Marshalling and Unmarshalling. A quick google found this article at site:wikipedia.org

Why merge it into a higher cloud? Things are hard enough when a person who started with assembler language on a museum relic wants to keep up. If you make it harder, we'll just start collecting social security that much sooner (and thereby perhaps cost you money you'd rather spend on a new StarTrek-inspired electronic toy).

Is that reason enough to leave this un"merged" ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.69.139.146 (talk) 05:10, 30 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Spelling with one or two l ?

Is it spelled with one l or two? I found different sources (e.g. even in the WP-article, its called "marshaling" sometimes).

Origin of term?

Is the origin of the term at the end of the article serious? Is "serialization" named for Gregory Serial? Marshal is a plenty good verb that predates the 1960s. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.2.177.155 (talk) 22:39, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm extremely skeptical about this, and think it should probably be removed if it can't be shown to be true. I suspect it is a prank. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Daschepers (talk • contribs) 02:52, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Surely the origin of the term is by analogy with sending freight cars over a single rail line as per Marshalling_yard 192.93.164.28 (talk) 15:09, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This article only states where marshal is used, but not clearly states what it is.

Can someone add more explanation of what it is? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Deqing.huang (talk • contribs) 06:31, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Marshaling vs. Serialization

Your distinction between the two terms is language-specific and irrelevant. Who cares how Java uses the terms? In Computer Science, they are the same thing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.35.35.34 (talk) 14:15, 13 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]