What is the purpose of Serialization in Java?

Question

I have read quite a number of articles on Serialization and how it is so nice and great but none of the arguments were convincing enough. I am wondering if someone can reall

Answer 1

In essense:

Serialization is the process of converting a set of object instances that contain references to each other into a linear stream of bytes, which can then be sent through a socket, stored to a file, or simply manipulated as a stream of data

See uses from Wiki:

Serialization has a number of advantages. It provides:

1. a method of persisting objects which is more convenient than writing their properties to a text file on disk, and re-assembling them by reading this back in.
2. a method of issuing remote procedure calls, e.g., as in SOAP
3. a method for distributing objects, especially in software componentry such as COM, CORBA, etc.
4. a method for detecting changes in time-varying data.