I just came across a class that uses serialization to clone itself.
Its a class that is a base class for about 30 different classes that
represent items stored in a relational database.  I understand that the
programmer did this so they could clone any object inherting from the
base class, without writing anything else.  I'm not sure if this is
really a good idea or not though.  Any opinions?

    public Object clone() {
        ByteArrayOutputStream baos = null;
        ObjectOutputStream oos = null;
        ByteArrayInputStream bais = null;
        ObjectInputStream ois = null;
        try {
            baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            oos = new ObjectOutputStream(baos);
            oos.writeObject(this);
            bais = new ByteArrayInputStream(baos.toByteArray());
            ois = new ObjectInputStream(bais);
            return ois.readObject();
        }
        catch (ClassNotFoundException cnfe) {
            throw new RuntimeException(cnfe);
        }
        catch (IOException ioe) {
            throw new RuntimeException(ioe);
        }
        finally {
            if (oos != null) try { oos.close(); } catch (IOException ioe) {}
            if (ois != null) try { ois.close(); } catch (IOException ioe) {}
        }
    }