VMware Tanzu GemFire PDX Serialization

This topic discusses using PDX serialization in VMware Tanzu GemFire.

Tanzu GemFire’s Portable Data eXchange (PDX) is a cross-language data format that can reduce the cost of distributing and serializing your objects. PDX stores data in named fields that you can access individually, to avoid the cost of deserializing the entire data object. PDX also allows you to mix versions of objects where you have added or removed fields.

• Tanzu GemFire PDX Serialization Features

  Tanzu GemFire PDX serialization offers several advantages in terms of functionality.

• High Level Steps for Using PDX Serialization

  To use PDX serialization, you can configure and use Tanzu GemFire’s reflection-based autoserializer, or you can program the serialization of your objects by using the PDX interfaces and classes.

• Using Automatic Reflection-Based PDX Serialization

  You can configure your cache to automatically serialize and deserialize domain objects without having to add any extra code to them.

• Serializing Your Domain Object with a PdxSerializer

  For a domain object that you cannot or do not want to modify, use the PdxSerializer class to serialize and deserialize the object’s fields. You use one PdxSerializer implementation for the entire cache, programming it for all of the domain objects that you handle in this way.

• Implementing PdxSerializable in Your Domain Object

  For a domain object with source that you can modify, implement the PdxSerializable interface in the object and use its methods to serialize and deserialize the object’s fields.

• Programming Your Application to Use PdxInstances

  A PdxInstance is a light-weight wrapper around PDX serialized bytes. It provides applications with run-time access to fields of a PDX serialized object.

• Adding JSON Documents to the Tanzu GemFire Cache

  The JSONFormatter API allows you to put JSON formatted documents into regions and retrieve them later by storing the documents internally as PdxInstances.

• Using PdxInstanceFactory to Create PdxInstances

  You can use the PdxInstanceFactory interface to create a PdxInstance from raw data when the domain class is not available on the server.

• Persisting PDX Metadata to Disk

  Tanzu GemFire allows you to persist PDX metadata to disk and specify the disk store to use.

• Using PDX Objects as Region Entry Keys

  Using PDX objects as region entry keys is highly discouraged.