[Simple-support] How do you serialize an object as an attribute?

[James O. <Jam...@ip...>]

Let's say I have an object (ID).

ID:

-          Number

-          Version
This can be easily expressed as a simple string in the format <number>-<version> e.g. 1234-1
In most cases I'd like to express this as an attribute for other xml elements (id="1234-1")
However, it's currently in element format.
e.g. <ID number="1234" version="1">

How do I get this annotated to read into and out of another object's element's attribute?
e.g.
<someOtherObject attribute1="blah blah" id="1234-1"/>


To make this request more complicated, let's say I want to preserve some backwards compatibility and be able to deserialize the old element based XML, how would I do that?

Can I serialize the ID as an element in some cases where it is specified as an @Element in one including object or as an attribute in another including object where it is annotated as @Attribute there?

Thanks!