Can you use the DataContractSerializer outside of WCF?

Question

From the reading I've done I'm under the impression the DataContractSerializer handles versionong issues by, if members in the request are not there it will set the default value, and if addional members are in the request but not in the definition the serializer will simply ignores these fields and not process them.

Firstly, is this assumption correct?

Secondly, could you use this DataContractSerializer instead of the XMLSerializer so you can add this versioning ability to old asmx web services? Basically, if you add new members to your web service schema request you won't need to send to every client? When you receive the request from the client you can Deserialize using the DataContractSerializer into your object.

Hope this makes sense

Answer 1

You can use the DataContractSerializer outside of WCF to manually deserialize and serialize object graphs. However, you cannot tell ASMX to use the serializer. You are much better of just replacing your ASMX services with WCF services.

Answer 2

I have used the DataContract Serializer to import xml files, it works fine.