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* Support for storing and retrieving :class:`~persistence.Archive` objects in XML is provided. Functions :func:`persistence.dump_xml`, :func:`persistence.dumps_xml`, :func:`persistence.load_xml`, and :func:`persistence.loads_xml` have been added to the :mod:`persistence` module.
* Support for using Python pickle to store and retrieve data from archives will be removed from GTC with the release of version 2.0. This means that :func:`persistence.load`, :func:`persistence.loads`, :func:`persistence.dumps`, and :func:`persistence.dump` will be no longer be available. Deprecation warnings have been added.
* A static copy-constructor method :func:`~persistence.Archive.copy` has been added for archives. This function duplicates the contents of another :class:`~persistence.Archive` object. The :func:`~persistence.Archive.copy` method can be used, for example, after an archive has been loaded from a deprecated record format. In that case, the loaded archive is not in a state that can be re-stored (in a different format); however, a copy generated by :func:`~persistence.Archive.copy` can be stored. This provides a mechanism to update archives stored in deprecated formats.
* XML and JSON schemas that describe the structure of archive serialisation records are provided. The schemas are stored in a subfolder (``/schema``) of the ``GTC`` installation.