In Spring Batch 2.2.0, we introduced the ability to inject your own serializer so that users can select the method of serialization for the execution context (You can see the Jira issue here: https://jira.spring.io/browse/BATCH-1684 and the related commit here: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-batch/pull/53).  However, Spring Batch Admin builds their own DAOs for the `JobService` (instead of using the `JobRepositoryFactoryBean` which provides a default option if none is provided).  Because of that, Admin was not addressing this new need.

As for why serialization is needed at all, the `JdbExecutionContextDao` serializes the `ExecutionContext` into the database for restartability.