Users will save their proposal data in XML format from the APT. This file can be read into the APT to recreate the proposal definition environment, with all of the objects that the user had previously defined. This file may be edited, but this is not the desired means of editing proposals. These files may be shared the way RPS2 files are shared today, and they may eventually replace RPS2 files in the submission and in-house processing phases.
In addition, APT will use the serialization features of Java to maintain a persistent state of the user's proposal definition environment. This will be automatically saved to disk periodically to allow the user to quickly restart at his current state. The time between saves will be user configurable to allow him to balance between speed and safety. The persistent state files are not designed to be human readable or editable, nor are they expected to be sharable. They may contain process and machine specific state information to allow the fastest possible restart times for the APT.