A tutorial introduction to Swarm: Swarm interfaces

defobj / serialization

Serialize means to deterministically flatten-out all the atomic parts of an object such that the parts can be written and then re-read without losing information. (Think the transporter on Star Trek.)

Swarm provides two ways to do this: in boxes and by wire.

HDF5

A library called HDF5 (http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5) provides former capability. HDF5 is a high-performance, portable, random access binary format for storing data. Swarm's HDF5 interface is in some sense like hiring competent professional movers: you point them at your stuff and they pack it efficiently into boxes and label everything in a clear way. They even write down how the room was arranged.

Various packages support HDF5.
- R (http://www.r-project.org), a free statistical package much like S-plus
- VisAD (http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/visad.html), a free data visualization package
- Octave (http://www.che.wisc.edu/octave), a free math package much like MathLab
Lisp format

Objects can also be represented in textual expressions suitable for sending over a byte stream.

Both mechanisms can be customized or extended by users in an agent's implementation.