While many systems routinely manage the conversion between objects and relational databases, there is something unnatural about this relationship. You can encapsulate the issues, but you can't escape them — relational databases think in terms of relations, not objects.
An obvious alternative is to build your system on top of a true object-oriented database. OODBs are a natural match when using objects in programs. From the user's viewpoint, there is no need to serialize or otherwise transform the object. The system takes care of any transformations required to transmit the object from the program to the OODB and any transformations required to store the object in the OODB.