Self-describing data

Self-describing data carries type information along with the data. For example, the previous data might get encoded as

table
    uint8 3
    uint 2
string
    uint8 4
    []byte fred
string
    uint8 10 
    []byte programmer
string
    uint8 6 
    []byte liping
string
    uint8 7 
    []byte analyst
string
    uint8 8 
    []byte sureerat
string
    uint8 7
    []byte manager

Of course, a real encoding would not normally be as cumbersome and verbose as in the example: small integers would be used as type markers and the whole data would be packed in as small a byte array as possible (XML provides a counter-example, though). However, the principle is that the marshaller will generate such type information in the serialised data. The unmarshaller will know the type-generation rules and will be able to use this to reconstruct the correct data structure.