A settings provider often supports more than one of the .NET Framework standard serialization schemes. These schemes are outlined by the System.Configuration.SettingsSerializeAs enumeration, and include plain text, XML, and binary serialization. In addition, a provider may optionally support a custom serialization scheme.

With the System.Configuration.SettingsSerializeAsAttribute, you can specify which serialization mechanism should be used for a given application settings class or property. This attribute is considered a request to the settings provider. It may be ignored or cause an error if the provider or the individual property type does not support the specified serialization scheme. If this attribute is not present, the provider will usually provide a default serialization mechanism, most commonly plain text.

Although the settings provider may provide a way to dynamically change the serialization mechanism during run time, this is not a typical capability.