Applied XML Programming for Microsoft® .NET

Conclusion

The XML serializer is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it lets you serialize and deserialize even complex .NET Framework classes to and from XML with very few lines of code. To accomplish this, the serializer needs to create an assembly on the fly. If you don’t use a global instance of the serializer for each type, you can easily add hundreds of milliseconds of overhead to each call—definitely not a pleasant prospect.

On the other hand, appropriately used, XML serialization produces more compact code than run-time SOAP serialization. If you add type information, and SOAP type information in particular, the ratio changes, however. The moral of this story is don’t ever mix XML and SOAP—use only the process you need.

Serialization ...