Marshalling (computer science)

In computer science, marshalling or marshaling is the process of transforming the memory representation of an object to a data format suitable for storage or transmission, and it is typically used when data must be moved between different parts of a computer program or from one program to another. Marshalling is similar to serialization and is used to communicate to remote objects with an object, in this case a serialized object. It simplifies complex communication, using custom/complex objects to communicate instead of primitives. The opposite, or reverse, of marshalling is called unmarshalling (or demarshalling, similar to deserialization).

Marshalling is used within implementations of different remote procedure call (RPC) mechanisms, where it is necessary to transport data between processes and/or between threads. In Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM), interface pointers must be marshalled when crossing COM apartment boundaries. In the .NET Framework, the conversion between an unmanaged type and a CLR type, as in the P/Invoke process, is also an example of an action that requires marshalling to take place.

Additionally, marshalling is used extensively within scripts and applications that utilize the XPCOM technologies provided within the Mozilla application framework. The Mozilla Firefox browser is a popular application built with this framework that additionally allows scripting languages to use XPCOM through XPConnect (Cross-Platform Connect).

In the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems the entire device drivers for Direct3D are kernel-mode drivers. The user-mode portion of the API is handled by the DirectX runtime provided by Microsoft.

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