Thanks for your replies.

To summarise:
Serilaisation is the procedure whereby an 'Entity' is tranaslated into a format that can be universally accessed ? e.g. outputting a ursor or a Dataset into an XML file.

Is this any different than say copying a DBF file to a CSV file , if we assume that a CSV file can be universally read ?

Does the output 'Always' have to be in XML format ?

Regards,

Gerard





>This concept exists in VFP, for example CursorToXml() Serialize a cursor into an XML string, and XMLToCursor Desirialize an XML String back into a cursor.
>
>HTH.
>
>>I've seen many rferences recently to 'Serilaization' in Dot Net and have never come across this concept in VFP.
>>
>>Anybody care to give an explanation of whet Serialization is and a few examples of how it can be used ?
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>Gerard