Technically, Object Serialization / Deserialization is any from of Object Marshalling / Demarshalling where the out-of-memory representation is a serial stream of bytes or characters. For instance, persisting an object to a relational or object database is not serialization because such databases aren’t serial structures, but converting an object to a SOAP stream is. However, the terms “serialization” and “marshalling” are often used interchangably without too much confusion.