title: Benefit of using static methods in web application
body: <p>I noticed in a custom base class that we use for a lot of our web pages we have a few static methods. Since the class is being used as a base class for web pages what benefit would it have making the methods static? I'm thinking none but wanted verification.</p>
  
  <p>Also in custom base class we have properties that call other static methods in a manager class of ours in another class library and returns either a DataTable or HashTable. 
  I can see where as a convenience factor for devs to code against but other than that is their any reason for making the methods static in there as well?</p>
  
  <p>So existing code looks something like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>public class CustomBaseClass
      protected Hashtable displayText
          {
              get{
                  if(_displayText == null)
                      displayText = MyManager.GetCustomersList(sCustID);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>since GetCustomersList is static every method inside this method has to be static as well. All the way down to our data access layer. Just seems odd to me coding it this way but was curious as to what you all thought.</p>
  
  <p>Our old developers who coded our application are gone and they use them all over the place. Is their any negatives or watch out fors to using static methods especially in an asp.net app?   </p>
  
  <p>If I create a singleton wouldn't that make more sense, then I wouldn't have to make all the method calls right down to our DAL static? lol</p>