How is Serialization implemented in Visual Basic .NET?
When coding applications that do not have or need access to a database, there is frequently a need to store data used in the program for later retrieval. Before .NET, any attempt to serialize data required custom code. For example, if the programmer needed to serialize the information from a class or data structure, a procedure could have been written that would write each instance of the class/structure to an XML document. Programming this code usually required a great deal of work and testing to make sure that the implemented serialization worked correctly. Fortunately, carrying out this task with .NET does not require writing, testing, or debugging custom code because it has been carefully planned and is very straightforward to implement.
