Issue-758: Revise and update Kryo serialization mechanism

First commit
Merge remote-tracking branch 'upstream/master' into cas-758
Issue-758: Revise and update Kryo serialization mechanism

Handle immutable collections and try/catch on streams
Merge remote-tracking branch 'upstream/master' into cas-758
Issue-758: Revise and update Kryo serialization mechanism

updates after Misagh's code review
Issue-758: Revise and update Kryo serialization mechanism

Merge with master
Issue-758: Revise and update Kryo serialization mechanism

Merged with master again
Merge pull request #811 from leleuj/cas-758

Issue-758: Revise and update Kryo serialization mechanism