Accessing static variable from subclass

Question

Hi,
this question is probably fairly common but I can't seem to find the answer around: Can somebody please explain the rationale behind the following behavior ?
public abstract class SuperClass {
    static String mess;
public class SubClass extends SuperClass {
    static {
        mess = "Hello world!";
    static String getMess() {
        return mess;
public class mymain {
    public static final void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println(SubClass.getMess());
}gives "Hello world!" as expected whereas
public abstract class SuperClass {
    static String mess;
    static String getMess() {
        return mess;
public class SubClass extends SuperClass {
    static {
        mess = "Hello world!";
public class mymain {
    public static final void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println(SubClass.getMess());
}gives "null". It looks like the initialization block is not executed. Why?
Thanks for your insight,
Chris

Answer 1

>
You're essentially claiming you need to override some static methods.No, there is indeed misunderstanding here. What I need to do is implement the methods with the signature given, I'm not overriding existing methods, in fact I'm not even deriving from any existing class. I only have to create the entry points in my code as defined, then publish them to the DB, and Oracle is going to use them (I think they can be called callbacks, also again not 100% sure).
Then it happens that in my particular case it's natural to have a master containing all the code and then subclasses that only define a few specific parameters that are to be used by the static (and instance) methods. Hence the final design. Currently my code looks like the following and seems to work (fingers crossed):
class ParseFileCLL extends ParseFile {
    // Name of the row type.
    private final static String rowType = "CLLROW";
    // Here I initialize static fields of the ParseFile master class.
    static {
        fileType = "CLL";
        fileStruct = new FileStruct(34);
    // Type methods implementing ODCITable interface.
    static public BigDecimal ODCITablePrepare(STRUCT[] sctx, STRUCT tfinfo, String sysName)
            throws SQLException {
        // prepareContext is a static helper method defined in the master class.
        return prepareContext(funcType, rowType, rowSetType, tfinfo);
// Other ODCI methods are only accessed directly in the master class, NOT in the subclass. Or else... WEIRD BUGS!
// In other words:
//  publish ParseFile.ODCITableStart() -> ok
//  publish ParseFileCLL.ODCITableStart() -> crash
}Not surprising. Java has plenty of undefined or inconsistently-defined behavior. The JLS is by no means perfect.
>
Well I kind of admire your composure about this, but it seems to me that if it's indeed the case, the meaning of it would be that the code could work in JVM 1.5.0.15 and not in 1.5.0.16, or worse run ok on Windows and not on Linux, which is if I understand correctly precisely the kind of behavior that Java was meant to cure, at least at its inception.
I think there might be other elements to the story though.
Thanks,
Chris