title: Pickle alternatives
body: <p>I am trying to serialize a large (~10**6 rows, each with ~20 values) list, to be used later by myself (so pickle's lack of safety isn't a concern).</p>
  
  <p>Each row of the list is a tuple of values, derived from some SQL database. So far, I have seen <code>datetime.datetime</code>, strings, integers, and NoneType, but I might eventually have to support additional data types.</p>
  
  <p>For serialization, I've considered pickle (cPickle), json, and plain text - but only pickle saves the type information: json can't serialize <code>datetime.datetime</code>, and plain text has its obvious disadvantages.</p>
  
  <p>However, cPickle is pretty slow for data this large, and I'm looking for a faster alternative.</p>