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Everything I read about serialization mentions it creates an object graph to preserve sharing and circular references. I understand the idea of sharing and circular referencing but what is an object graph? Is that similar to a UML class interaction diagram? Or is it just some hashmap that shows what objects point to each other?
The object graph is something like a UML diagram. In fact, it's really just the graph you get when you connect up all the references from object to object. It's nothing sophisticated at all.
The serialization writes objects in such a way that the object graph (i.e. the hierarchical and possibly circular relationships between objects) can be reconstructed. Internally, yes it actually uses a Hashtable, though that's an uninteresting detail, I think.
(By the way, for questions like "what does X do", you know that you can just look at the JDK source code, don't you?)
Ya I was digging around the writeObject source code and I had the basic idea but I just needed reassurance that I understood the whole concept. Thanks for clearing that up.