Most of the times when you want to do a selective attribute serialization you can use Serializable interface with transient modifier for variables not to be serialized. However, use of Externalizable interface can be really effective in cases when you have to serialize only some dynamically selected attributes of a large object. Lets take an example, Some times when you have a big Java object with hundreds of attributes and you want to serialize only a dozen dynamically selected attributes to keep the state of the object you should use Externalizable interface writeObject method to selectively serialize the chosen attributes. In case you have small objects and you know that most or all attributes are required to be serialized then you should be fine with using Serializable interface and use of transient variable as appropriate.