If you’re doing Java Web development using Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, then delivering data from the server to the client is probably your top concern. This article focuses on what matters most for many Java Web developers, producing data for the client, and walks you through five approaches to Java object serialization. It will give you all the information you need to choose the data format and technology best suited to your application.
This article is missing the best option. If you would like a quick and easy way to convert java classes to XML look at XStream. It is open source, fast, and takes very little code to convert classes to XML. Works great for web services and ajax.
We use it in our XSLServlet presentation logic.
Dunno, I think that using JSON in lieu of XML is probably the best option overall as it completely obviates the whole serialization step, and it’s hard to get more efficient than that.
The article does mention JSON.
If you’re interested in the Java-RPC-JSON solution, you may like this: http://oss.metaparadigm.com/jsonrpc/
The article, btw, cites as a drawback of the proposed JSON solution that you dump all the data and so “unneeded fields may often be sent across the network”. This is really a silly point to make. If you’re doing something wrong (or simply you’re not adding a certain capability) you can’t then point that as a drawback of the method. Tsk.
Otherwise the article is a good enough overview.