Standard serializers and deserializers can handle some complex types, such as JMS messages sent to the ContentViewed and ContentRecommended Oracle ATG Web Commerce Web Services. When Web Services interact with proprietary technologies, such as RepositoryItems, standard serializers and deserializers don’t understand the source data type so they aren’t able to recreate it.

A RepositoryItem is a specialized JavaBean called a Dynamic Bean that produces basic get and set methods for the fields you define for it. Many complex items are stored by the Oracle ATG Web Commerce platform as RepositoryItems. The following Web Services transmit content that’s natively stored as RepositoryItems:

For these Web Services, you can use the Atg.DotNet.WebService API to serialize and deserialize related content. Descriptions for API classes are in Using the Atg.DotNet.WebService API to Serialize and Deserialize RepositoryItems. You can find this API in ATGWS.dll, which you need to install in order to access them. See Installing ATGWS.dll.