TRANSFORMING TRANSIENT CONTENTS OF OBJECT-ORIENTED DATABASE INTO PERSISTENT TEXTUAL FORM ACCORDING TO GRAMMAR THAT INCLUDES KEYWORDS AND SYNTAX

A method and system for serializing a transient object-oriented database into a persistent form. The persistent form is a grammatical form, an expression of an object-oriented database in a textual form according to a grammar. The grammatical form is human-readable and human-editable. The grammar is designed to be platform-independent and programming-language-independent and therefore descriptive of any hierarchical object-oriented database. An object-oriented database is expressed as a plurality of entries in a transient, hierarchical, object-oriented form. The tree of entries is navigated and each entry is written to the persistent form as text according to the grammar. The serialized form stores only the key state of the database, not a “snapshot” of memory. Therefore, the persistent, serialized form is smaller than the in-memory, transient form of the object-oriented database. The object-oriented database is an object-oriented configuration database which stores configuration parameters pertaining to the software and hardware of a computer system, such as application programs, device drivers, system services, and other components. The object-oriented database is platform-independent and is therefore configured to be hosted on several different operating systems and computing platforms.