Patent ID: 8280916

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for providing data locality in a serialized object stream, comprising: (a) extracting, in a computer, data from an object into a serialized object stream, thereby creating a simple data stream comprised of an offset, which is followed by other data, which is followed by object references, wherein the offset, other data and object references are all located between an object data start and object data end, and the offset is a relative offset from the object data start that points to the object references; and (b) relocating, in the computer, data of a specified type from the extracted data to a specified location in the serialized object stream, thereby creating an enhanced data stream comprised of the offset, which is followed by the other data, which is followed by the relocated data, which is followed by the object references, wherein the offset, other data, relocated data and object references are all located between the object data start and object data end, the offset is the relative offset from the object data start that points to the object references, and the enhanced data stream is formatted in such a manner as to provide backward compatibility with the simple data stream, so that a program that is only capable of processing the simple data stream can access the enhanced data stream as the simple data stream.