Caution while extending a class which is Serializable

Question

I have a class A implementing Serializable and another class B extends A, but I want to use class B for XML binding, not for serialization.

Is there anything I should worry about?

Answer 1

Assuming you've implemented all of the Serializable methods in A, nope. You won't need to worry about implementing them, since that's already done. If there are any naming conflicts between XML binding and serialization, you can define the method in B and your XML binding library will call the methods for B, not those of A (i.e. polymorphism).

The only potential worry is a method that takes an argument of type Serializable -- if B, for whatever reason, shouldn't be (de)serialized, this is a problem. I doubt that this is a problem for you, if only because there are so few cases when it would apply.