Serialization byte array vs XML file

Question

I am heavily using byte array to transfer objects, primitive data, over the network and back. I adapt java\'s approach, by having a type implement ISerializable, which cont

Answer 1

Yes this will be faster than sending XML as you will be sending less data over the wire. Even if you compressed the XML (which would drastically reduce its size) you would still have the overhead of compression and decompression. So I would say that between what you are currently doing and XML serialization you are currently using the most efficient solution.

However I am curious as to how much of a performance hit you would incur by using XML instead of a marshaled object. The reason that I would encourage you to look into XML serialization is because you will be storing the data in an application-neutral format that is also human readable. If you are able to serialize the data to XML in a way that does not incur performance penalties in your application I would recommend that you look into it.