Patent ID: 7952500

Claim:
A method for converting between a first data structure ( 106 ) and a second data structure ( 107 ) in a computer system, the first data structure being a data structure in main memory and the second data structure comprising a serialized representation of the first data structure, the method characterized by: constructing one of said data structures from the other using a conversion means ( 108 ) the first data structure comprising a plurality of objects stored in the main memory of the computer system, at least some said objects corresponding to packets in the second data structure the second data structure comprising a plurality of packets, the packets characterized by: each packet comprising a type code encoded using a compressing encoding that utilizes the skewed distribution of type codes each packet comprising of a variable number of bits at least some packets being non-byte-aligned at least some packets comprising reference encodings the second data structure being capable of causing a deserialization means ( 110 ) in a computer to construct a data structure equivalent to the first data structure.