Homemade vs. Java Serialization

Question

I have a certain POJO which needs to be persisted on a database, current design specifies its field as a single string column, and adding additional fields to the table is not a

Answer 1

You might try Protocol Buffers, it is a open-source project from Google, it is said to be fast (generates shorter serialized form than XML, and works faster). It also handles addition of new field gently (inserts default values).