An educated guess (Timur Fanshteyn): Attributes based Coherence POF Serializer

As much as I love Oracle Coherence, it is a very much a Java product. .Net has lots of cool tricks that can be used during programming, however, they are not implemented in Coherence .Net

Many .Net developers are used to using attributes to define object serialization. A Coherence Generic serializer allows a developer to specify POF Serialization using object attributes as well. Here’s a simple example

    [POFSerializableObject()]
    public class Person// : IPortableObject
    {
        [POFSerializableMember(Order=0,WriteAsType=POFWriteAsTypeEnum.Int16)]
        public int ID { get; set; }
        [POFSerializableMember(Order=1)]
        public string FirstName { get; set; }
        [POFSerializableMember(Order = 2)]
        public string LastName { get; set; }
        [POFSerializableMember(Order = 3)]
        public string Address { get; set; }
        [POFSerializableMember(Order = 4)]
        public string Title { get; set; }
        public Person()
        {
        }
        //#region IPortableObject Members
        //public void ReadExternal(IPofReader reader)
        //{
        //    ID = reader.ReadInt32(0);
        //    FirstName = reader.ReadString(1);
        //    LastName = reader.ReadString(2);
        //    Address = reader.ReadString(3);
        //    Title = reader.ReadString(4);
        //}
        //public void WriteExternal(IPofWriter writer)
        //{
        //    writer.WriteInt32(0, ID);
        //    writer.WriteString(1, FirstName);
        //    writer.WriteString(2, LastName);
        //    writer.WriteString(3, Address);
        //    writer.WriteString(4, Title);
        //}
        //#endregion
    }

To force Coherence to use the serialization attribute, use the the Coherence Generic Serializer in the POF Configuration File

    <user-type>
      <type-id>1001</type-id>
      <class-name>CoherenceSample.Person, CoherenceSample</class-name>
      <serializer>
        <class-name>Coherence.Contrib.POFGenericSerializer, Coherence.Contrib</class-name>
      </serializer>
    </user-type>

Some important points to mention:

Object must include POFSerializableObject attribute
Generic Serializer will serialize Properties and Members
Objects MUST NOT implement IPortableObject. Doing so will force Coherence to use ReadExternal and WriteExternal functions instead of a custom serializer
Order parameter of the attribute is optional. The order of serialization is Order, Alphabetical Ascending. Meaning. Multiple attributes can have the same order argument, and will be serialized in alphabetical order
WriteAsType parameter is optional and is usually derived based on the source type.
Serializer uses Converter.Convert() to convert between object types.
Most (but not all) main types are implemented. Check out the source code for specifics
Hardcoding a serializer still provides better performance due to extra boxing and object conversion performed by the serializer.

Please check out the latest code on Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/linqtocoherence