IsReference property in data contract

Question

What is the purpose of IsReference property in DataContract? How does the request and response vary with this property applied?

Answer 1

It determines how objects are serialized, by default, IsReference=false.

Setting IsReference = true allows the serialization of trees of objects that can reference each other. So with a list of Employees that each have a property for Manager (who is also an Employee), a reference to the Manager for each Employee can be held rather than embedding the Manager within each Employee node:

IsReference=false would produce:

 
       
      Kenny 
 
 
       
             
            Kenny 
        
      Bob 
 
 
       
             
            Kenny 
        
      Alice 
 

Where as IsReference=true would produce:

 
        
      Kenny 
 
 
        
      Bob 
 
 
        
      Alice 
 

Snippets taken from this weblog that has a full explanation along with examples of the generated XML with the property applied.

MSDN - IsReference Property provides details as well as Interoperable Object References.