Static Methods in an Interface/Abstract Class

Question

First off, I understand the reasons why an interface or abstract class (in the .NET/C# terminology) cannot have abstract static methods. My question is then more focused on the best design solution.

What I want is a set of "helper" classes that all have their own static methods such that if I get objects A, B, and C from a third party vendor, I can have helper classes with methods such as

AHelper.RetrieveByID(string id);
AHelper.RetrieveByName(string name);
AHelper.DumpToDatabase();

Since my AHelper, BHelper, and CHelper classes will all basically have the same methods, it seems to makes sense to move these methods to an interface that these classes then derive from. However, wanting these methods to be static precludes me from having a generic interface or abstract class for all of them to derive from.

I could always make these methods non-static and then instantiate the objects first such as

AHelper a = new AHelper();
a.DumpToDatabase();

However, this code doesn't seem as intuitive to me. What are your suggestions? Should I abandon using an interface or abstract class altogether (the situation I'm in now) or can this possibly be refactored to accomplish the design I'm looking for?

Answer 1

If I were you I would try to avoid any statics. IMHO I always ended up with some sort of synchronization issues down the road with statics. That being said you are presenting a classic example of generic programming using templates. I will adopt the template based solution of Rob Copper presented in one of the posts above.