Improvement of Object Serialization in Java Remote Method Invocation

In Java remote method invocation (RMI) objects are serialized before being sent over the wire. JDK object serialization causes overheads due to verbose data in the serialized object, dynamic type checking, and so on. JavaParty project (Haumacher and Philippsen, 1998) reduces RMI overheads by eliminating redundant data in the serialized object, using explicit marshaling, slim type encoding, etc. Both serialization mechanisms are designed for arbitrary objects. In this paper, we pursue a new mechanism, based on the merits of JavaParty serialization, to serialize homogeneous data structures, i.e. data structures of identical element types. Simulation studies are conducted to evaluate the performance of JDK, JavaParty and our proposed serialization mechanism. Our serialization mechanism yields the best performance in terms of these data structures