What does Serialization in .net mean?

Serialization can be defined as the process of storing the state of an object instance to a storage medium. During this process, the public and private fields of the object and the name of the class, including the assembly containing the class, is converted to a stream of bytes, which is then written to a data stream. When the object is subsequently deserialized, an exact clone of the original object is created.

Mostly you serialize objects to : XML or binary

Advantages of Binary Serialization

1. All members, no matter if they are read-only will be serialized.
2. Greater performance*

Advantages of XML Serialization

1. Greater flexibility of object sharing and usage (interoperability)
2. No strict binary dependence
3. Human readable