Desktop .NET <-> CF communication via XmlSerializer

[Guest]

Folks,

I need to arrange for communication between a .NET CF 2.0 application and a
server executable. The latter has not yet been written, but may as well be
done in C#. I am thinking that liberal use of XmlSerializer would probably be
the best means for passing data back and forth between the handheld and
server, given the lack of Remoting support in WM. I have no experience with
such an approach, however, so I'd like to ask, first, is it reasonable? and
second, is there anything particular I need to watch out for? I.e., is there
any reason why an object serialized on the server, transported as Xml, and
then deserialized on the HH (or vice versa) should be different from the
original object? Also, is this approach likely to create unacceptable
overhead, relative to manual serialization?

TIA,

Matthew Fleming
DermVision

 

[Guest]

There always will be some overhead when using a generic xml serialization
engine. Although my tests showed the performance of the XmlSerializer on CF
is quite good.
Just make sure that you cache the instances of the XmlSerializer by the type:

http://blog.opennetcf.org/ayakhnin/PermaLink.aspx?guid=ab47d51e-07a9-4f6e-98f9-b86e6fd98efd

 

[Lebesgue]

XmlSerializer is "caching itself", so there is no need to cache it
externally.

 

[Sriram Krishnan [MSFT]]

Folks,

I need to arrange for communication between a .NET CF 2.0 application and a
server executable.

Depends on what kind of communication we're talking about here. For
example, the Device Command Shell uses a XML-RPC mechanism where the
device runs a XmlRpc server and the client (on the desktop) makes calls
to that server.