20.13. Understanding Object Serialization
The term serialization describes the process of persisting (and possibly transferring) the state of an object into a stream (e.g., file stream and memory stream). The persisted data sequence contains all the necessary information you need to reconstruct (or deserialize) the state of the object for use later. Using this technology makes it trivial to save vast amounts of data (in various formats). In many cases, saving application data using serialization services results in less code than using the readers/writers you find in the System.IO namespace.
For example, assume you want to create a GUI-based desktop application that provides a way for end users to save their preferences (e.g., window color and ...
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