Chapter 6. The Externalizable API
6.1. About Externalizer
An
Externalizer is a class that can:
- Marshall a given object type to a byte array.
- Unmarshall the contents of a byte array into an instance of the object type.
Externalizers are used by JBoss Data Grid and allow users to specify how their object types are serialized. The marshalling infrastructure used in JBoss Data Grid builds upon JBoss Marshalling and provides efficient payload delivery and allows the stream to be cached. The stream caching allows data to be accessed multiple times, whereas normally a stream can only be read once.
