Accessing serialized data on DataBase

Hi.
The issue is that I'm using MySQL to store sessions.
In order to store objects for a session, I'm serialzing these objects.
Something like:
Tbl: Session
Fields : SessID as varchar (PK)
SessStart varchar (Session starting time)
SessTimeToLive int ( in seconds)
SessInfo -> the actual information stored in the session



I thought about 2 implementation and I don't know which one is better,
or wether there much better implementation than these:
1. Storing serialized data inside "SessInfo" as an xml doc
In orde to retrieve, I load it to DOM, Find the element by element name,
and de-serializing it's content.
2. Storing serialized data inside dictionary(value), and then serailizing the whole
dictionary.
for example in order to retrieve session data according to a key:
in the "SessInfo" there is currently -----serialized data-----
so:
de-serialize "SessInfo" -> {key1 : serialized value, key2 : serialized value}
get serialized value from key
de-serialize value


Hope I explained it good

Thank you very much
Roy

Just use one of Python's many serialization modules: cPickle and/or shelve would be most appropriate here.

I am wondering what is the best way to actually store the serialized data in the
DB ( xml that containes serialized data or maybe serialized dictionary)
, not how to serialize it.

I'd probably go for the dictionary, mainly because it seems like it'll be more efficent than parsing an XML document to get the data. Plus pickeling a dictionary is infinatly easier

Mark.

Thanks Mark.
I'll try that