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POAlternative to protobuf-net - size and time efficient serializer to work with objects graph
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copied!<p>Google <a href="http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">protobuf</a> is great protocol to serialize objects efficient, but it only <strong>supports serialization of trees, not graphs</strong> (lack of full Object Reference Tracking).</p> <p>There are few implementation of Google idea in .NET. (i.e. <a href="http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-csharp-port/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">protobuf-csharp-port</a>, or <a href="http://code.google.com/p/protosharp/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">protosharp</a>), but most interesting is <a href="http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-net/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">protobuf-net</a>.</p> <p>Protobuf-net is better because its architecture fits, to .NET world, and <strong>has several add-ins</strong> (not always compatible with original protobuf, but very useful).</p> <p>One of that add-in is possibility to turn on reference tracking (AsReference option), which allows to serialize complex graphs even with cycles. </p> <p>Unnecessary Protobuf-net v2 is in beta version, and <strong>AsReference option not works at real world scenarios</strong>. (without this option everything works well, but without Reference Tracikng protobuf-net is not able to serialize graphs and is not longer attractive serializer).</p> <p>It still have some bugs:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-net/issues/detail?id=196" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Issue 196</a></li> <li><a href="http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-net/issues/detail?id=213" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Issue 213</a></li> <li><a href="http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-net/issues/detail?id=232" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Issue 232</a></li> <li><a href="http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-net/issues/detail?id=242" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Issue 242</a></li> <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6294295/protobuf-net-serializing-object-graph">SO 6294295</a></li> <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7219959/protobuf-net-asreference-require-public-constructor-in-activator-createinstance">SO 7219959</a></li> </ul> <p>So, I can't use this great tool, and I'm looking for alternative serializer which:</p> <ul> <li>is at least as fast, and produces small output as <a href="http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">protobuf</a></li> <li>is easy to adopt to current project like <a href="http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-net/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">protobuf-net</a></li> <li>allows to serialize graph like DataContractSerializer with PreserveObjectReferences set to true</li> <li>is stable not only for simple objects, but for complex real world scenarios</li> </ul>

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