I've a small, emergency backup system I'm writing. I may not have a database available. Can Csla 4.2 objects be serialized out at XML files and if so, how?
Absolutely yes. CSLA doesn't care at all about where or how you store your data.
Given that, the real question is how should you create/consume the XML?
There are various techniques and technologies.
The one thing you do not want to do is directly serialize/deserialize the business objects into XML. That path leads to disaster due to versioning issues, changes to serialization formats over time, etc.
What you want to do is pick a scheme you control, or a scheme that doesn't change over time. Some technologies to consider:
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