question about serialization

[Bjorn]

Hi,

I read a lot of things about Serialization but i'm not sure i understand
what it is really doing.
Anyway, i use in my application the 'Profiles' which must contain things
like name of customers, address... and a kind of shoppinglist.
Therefore i created a class with "<Serializable()" and i created the
profiles in web.config and added "serializeAs="Binary", just like i read in
some doc. Everything works perfectly.

Now i removed "<Serializable()" from the class file and
"serializeAs="Binary" from web.config and it still works.

Could somebody explain me the difference between the two situations: with
"<Serializable()" and without "<Serializable()" ? What does that do and is
it recommended?

Thanks in advance
Bjorn


in App_Code:
<Serializable()> _
Public Class myClass
Private _name As string
.....
end class


in web.config:
<profile>
<properties>
...........
<add shoppinglist="eComm" serializeAs="Binary" .../>
</properties>
</profile>