Object persistence & serailization: patent from Microsoft

[Francis ANDRE]

Hi

As an effort to monopolize eveything, the Microsoft guys have deposed a USA
patent about serialization of objects:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-...040261020.PGNR.
What's funny is the following extract from the patent:

A Object is like a potatoe plenty of "Water" that is dehydrated when
serialized!! hugh

[0019] The serialized data of an object may be thought of as a "dehydrated
object" where all of the water (object functions in this metaphor) has been
squeezed out of the object. This leaves only dry potato flakes (the data).
Later, a hungry person wishes to have mashed potatoes (the object with the
data), the potato flakes may be rehydrated. To "add water" to a dehydrated
object, an empty object is created and the stored data is inserted therein.

Enjoy!!

[Victor Bazarov]

Francis ANDRE wrote:

Hi

As an effort to monopolize eveything, the Microsoft guys have deposed a USA
patent about serialization of objects:
[...]

From what I can see, since the technique of converting objects to XML and
back has existed for a while (see XMLRPC for example), they couldn't get
a patent *unless* there was something different. And they have it (or at
least they try). The conversion does not *copy* all objects on which the
serialised object depends, it creates "references" (whatever that is).

V