The IBM WebSphere data handler API provides a single class, called DataHandler. The abstract DataHandler base class facilitates the development of a custom data handler. This class contains the methods that populate a business object with values extracted from serialized input data, and methods that serialize a business object into a string or a stream. The class also includes utility methods that a custom data handler can use. You derive a custom data handler from this DataHandler class. For information on the methods in the DataHandler class, see the Data Handler Guide.