Tone's Notes

Lessons from XML Serialization:

1. - Tracking down errors from the exceptions & stack trace is hard.
2. - Serializable classes need a public default constructor – obscure generic error message.
3. - Non-polymorphic arrays can be elements to avoid nesting.
4. - The XmlAnyElement allows a mix of parse & unparsed content.
5. - Its easy and flexible to alter element & attribute names, shift things between elements, attributes, and text.
6. - Match the value assigned to a field by the default constructor with DefaultValue attributes to keep optional stuff from appearing in the output.
7. - Polymorphism works well and may be programmatically extended by using the second argument to the XmlSerializer constructor.