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The Efficiency of Serialization in Java

This was my Extended Essay for my International Baccalaureate program in high school, where I had to pick a topic and research question and write about it.

Research Question: How effective is the default serialization in Java compared to serialization with other libraries based on its time and memory allocation?
Within this 3,664-word essay, I discussed different Java serialization frameworks and found which serialization method was the best based on its time taken, memory used, and algorithmic efficiency.
This research question was inspired by a conversation I had with someone who simply said, "Java's serialization sucks." I decided to do an investigation in this paper to find out why.

What Did I Do?

Pictured Above: Part of the UML for the XStream Serialization framework for Java.

Researching Frameworks

For each of the frameworks, I looked into their serialization format and how it worked. For each framework I looked at (GSON, Jackson, Kryo, XStream), I made a UML diagram of their algorithm by manually stepping through their code.

Pictured Above: Part of the program organization for all of the tests.

Testing Frameworks

Using Maven, I integrated all of the Serialization frameworks and created several classes for testing. I had five tests within my investigation, so I had to make classes to test each part of it, including memory usage calculation and specific logging files to accrue all the data. I wrote about 20 classes for logic and 30 classes for testing.

Pictured Above: The player loses all their lives and the final scoreboard shows.

Writing the Essay

I gathered the data for each test for both serialization and deserialization, then compared the time taken and memory used. Using the data, I was able to make a swift conclusion: Kryo was the fastest framework and had the lowest memory usage. I then compared all the results back to the Java Object Serializer (JOS) and why it sucks.

What Have I Learned?

I was never a big fan of research, and doing this was no exception (pun intended). However, I learned a lot when researching, especially when I dove deeper into the algorithms for each framework. I also learned how to plan coding effectively - the amount of code I wrote was a lot and was frustrating to troubleshoot at times, but because I gave myself two weeks, I was able to get it done on time. I did learn a lot through these tests and now have a better understanding of what serialization can do and how it's used within the world.

The Efficiency of Serialization in Java

What Did I Do?

What Have I Learned?

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