What is the best way to store data to a file? Serialization?

FYI: I am some what of a novice programer. I have almost finished my degree but everything I know about Java is self taught (never taken a course in java). Any way here is my question.
So I have an example program that I have created. It basically just has three textpanes which also have the ability to contain images. Now I would like to learn how to store data to a file for later retrieval and decided to use a program such as this as an example. I am not sure if I should use the serialization API that java has or some other means such as XML. If I used XML I was not sure how to store the image data that would be contained in the text panes. I figured serialization would take care of that if I just serialized my main class and then restored it. So That is that I tried first. Is this a good direction to go?
The problem I am having is that I cant seem to get the serialization to work the way I need it to. I am not sure what I am doing wrong because I have read many tutorials and looked at allot of example code but still dont understand. The tutorial I looked at most is [this one at IBM.|http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Programming/serialization/]
The eclipse project folder for my example program can be found here:
[http://startoftext.com/stuff/myMenuExp/]
zipped version:
[http://startoftext.com/stuff/myMenuExp.zip]
The main class is mainwindow.java. I know the source is kinda dirty. Any comments are welcome but I am most interested in how to solve this serialization problem. Thanks
-James

DrClap wrote:
What will the nature of the data be? Just a handful of strings? A bunch of objects of different types reflecting the current state of your program to great depth and complexity? Something else?The data will be what is contained in three text panes. Each text pane containing rich text and images. For an example take a look at the example program in my first post.
How will the data be used? Just write it out when the app shuts down, and read it all back in when it starts up? Do you need to query or search for specific subsets of the data? Is there any value in the stored form of the data being human-readable?Basically the data will need to be saved when the application shuts down or when the user selects save from the file menu. The data will be restored when the user opens the file from the file menu. It would be nice if the stored data is human readable but its not of primary importance.
How often will the data be written and read? How many reads/writes/bytes/etc. per second/minute? Not often. Just a simple open and save from the file menu.
How large could the data conceivably get?It will probably be a few paragraphs of formated text and less then a dozen images per text pane.
Will reading and writing of the data need to occur concurrently?no.
Do you need to add new data to the storage as your app goes along, or just replace what's there with the most current state?Replace with the most current state of the data.
If it's a simple read once at startup, write once at shutdown, overwriting the previous data, read only by your app, not by humans, then serialization via ObjectInput/OutputStream is probably the way to go. If there are other requirements, you may want to go with XML serialization, a DB, or some other solution.Thanks for the information. Serialization sounds like the way to go. Even if I end up using XML serialization in the end it would still be of interest to me to learn how to use serialization without xml.
I was trying to go with using serialization in be beginning but I cant seem to get it to work. Would you be willing to take a look at my example program. I attempted to implement serialization but it does not seem to work. Could you take a look and see what I am doing wrong. At this point I am stuck as i cant seem to get serialization to work.
I am going to go ahead and mark this thread as answered because I think I already got most of the information I was looking for except what I am doing wrong with my attempt as serialization.
Thank you jverd for your time.

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