The serialization format uses the class desc followed by the value. We could do this as well, using an illegal identifier symbol for a delimiter (;) so your example would become: foo.package.Type1;A The classloading problems can be easily handled by lazily loading the type when that portion of the fqn is accessed as an object. When accessed as a string, the above form is returned. However, there is nothing stopping the developer from doing this themself. So after thinking about it. It is not worth the effort. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4117694#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...