The strings are how HUMANS not machines interact with the UUID. When your java stacktrace spits out a log with an UUID it's going to spit out a STRING because i

The strings are how HUMANS not machines interact with the UUID. When your java stacktrace spits out a log with an UUID it's going to spit out a STRING because it's written for you and not the computer. When you take that UUID and go start sniffing around internal systems you're going to copy the UTF-8 string representation.