Unmarshalling

In computer science, unmarshalling or unmarshaling refers to the process of transforming a representation of an object that was used for storage or transmission to a representation of the object that is executable. A serialized object which was used for communication can not be processed by a computer program. An unmarshalling interface takes the serialized object and transforms it into an executable form. Unmarshalling (similar to deserialization) is the reverse process of marshalling.

Usually XML objects are used when data needs to be transferred between processes, threads or systems, because this results in shorter message wire format and efficient data transfers. Once the data is transferred back to a program or an application, it needs to be converted back to an executable object for usage. Hence, unmarshalling is generally used in the receiver end of the implementations of Remote Method Invocation (RMI) and Remote Procedure Call (RPC) mechanisms to unmarshal transmitted objects in an executable form.

JAXB or Java Architecture for XML Binding is the most common framework used by developers to marshal and unmarshal Java objects. JAXB provides for the interconversion between fundamental data types supported by Java and standard XML schema data types.

XmlSerializer is the framework used by C# developers to marshal and unmarshal C# objects. One of the advantages of C# over Java is that C# natively supports marshalling due to the inclusion of XmlSerializer class. Java, on the other hand requires a non-native glue code in the form of JAXB to support marshalling.

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