XML data binding: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:17, 9 May 2005

Revision as of 10:05, 27 July 2005

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An XML data binder accomplishes this by creating a mapping between elements of the [[XML schema]] of the document we wish to bind and [[Instance variable|members]] of a [[Class (computer science)|class]] to be represented in memory.

When this process is applied to convert an XML document to an object, it is called [[Serialization|marshallingunmarshalling]]. The reverse process, to serialize an object as XML, is called unmarshallingmarshalling.

Since XML is inherently sequential and objects are (usually) not, XML data binding mappings often fail to preserve all the information in an XML document. Specifically, information like [[comment]]s, [[XML entity reference]]s, and [[sibling order]] will fail to be preserved in the object representation created by the binding application. This is not necessarily true; sufficiently complex data binders are capable of preserving 100% of the information in an XML document.