As a part of the JBoss Remoting project (and hopefully several other projects as well), I've developed a separated marshalling (a.k.a. serialization) framework. This framework was inspired by the need for certain features unavailable with the standard Object*Stream classes:

• Pluggable class resolvers, making it easy to customize classloader policy, by implementing a small interface (rather than having to subclass the Object*Stream classes)



• Pluggable object replacement (also without subclassing)



• Pluggable predefined class tables, which can dramatically decrease stream size and serialization time for stream types which frequently use a common set of classes



• Pluggable predefined instance tables, which make it easy to handle remote references



• Pluggable externalizers which may be used to serialize classes which are not Serializable , or for which an alternate strategy is needed



• Customizable stream headers



• Each marshaller instance is highly configurable and tunable to maximize performance based on expected usage patterns



• A generalized API which can support many different protocol implementations, including protocols which do not necessarily provide all the above features



• Inexpensive instance creation, beneficial to applications where many short-lived streams are used



• Support for separate class and instance caches, if the protocol permits; useful for sending multiple messages or requests with a single stream, with separate object graphs but retaining the class cache

The default implementation, known as "River", is also available as a separate JAR.

This project does not have a home page, but the binaries have been uploaded to repositry.jboss.org and the Javadocs are available online at docs.jboss.org . The source code may be found in my sandbox repository for now, until it gets a permanent home.

Enjoy!