Robert, Knowing next to nothing about xml, I'm surprised by xml archive file that I've generated which expresses std::string as in the following example: <item> <count>3</count> <item>65</item> <item>108</item> <item>108</item> </item> which corresponds to std::string("All") Is this intended? Is this representation configurable? The demo_file.xml does not use this representation, rather it generates strings in the form: <street1>24th Street</street1> Needless to say the former representation is not very space efficient. For a text archive of 1.2MB I get an xml archive 21.5MB. I am unable to compile(VC7.1) the demo_xml_save project with the following error: Compiling... demo_xml_save.cpp c:\boost\boost_1_31_0\libs\serialization\example\demo_xml_save.cpp(20) : fatal error C1055: compiler limit : out of keys Thanks, Jeff