Formatters are used for encoding and decoding the messages before they are transported by the Channel in .Net Remoting Framework.

The .Net Remoting Framework supports two types of Formatters

  1. Binary Formatter - System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary
  2. SOAP Formatter - System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Soap

The data in binary Formatter has smaller size when compared to SOAP Formatter. The SOAP Formatter is an XML based cross platform text format , so it can be human readable. The data in a SOAP Formatter larger size when compared to Binary Formatter , so it can therefore reduce overall performance.