---
title:  Serializing Data
---

<!--
Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
(the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at

     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.
-->

Data in your client application's <%=vars.product_name%> cache must be serializable to be shared
with <%=vars.product_name%> servers and other <%=vars.product_name%> clients. Built-in .NET
Framework types are serialized automatically into the cache and can be retrieved by Java servers
and other <%=vars.product_name%> clients.

For domain objects that are not simple types, <%=vars.product_name%> provides multiple
serialization options for storage and transmittal between processes, of which
[**<%=vars.product_name%> Portable Data eXchange (PDX) serialization**](dotnet-serialization/dotnet-pdx-serialization.html) offers the best combination of
versatility and ease-of-use for most applications.

Many .NET Framework clients can take advantage of **PDX reflection-based autoserialization**.

To learn more about other serialization options, see the [Data Serialization section in the
_<%=vars.product_name_long%> User
Guide_](<%=vars.serverman%>/developing/data_serialization/chapter_overview.html).
