[Boost-users] sending large serialized objects over network using MPI

HI, I am involved in a project which requires the transport of large C++ instances over MPI communication channels. I am using boost serialization to pack and unpack the objects into a buffer. The whole buffer is sent in one shot. Of course for large objects this can be problematic. I have two questions... 1) is there any way to tell beforehand how large the buffer needs to be? In other words, can you run serialization in a counting only mode? 2) is there an archive implemented which streams across MPI communication channels (not sure this is the right terminology.)? Seems like it might be useful. This might be a better question for the boost MPI team, though. Thanks, Jon