KNB Software Development Guide: Metacat Utilities Classes
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Metacat contains its own utilities classes (as opposed to the utilities classes available in the generic utilities module). These utilities classes provide services that are specific to Metacat. Some of the properties that typify a utility are:

• Static methods - all methods are called statically.
• No state - there are no state variables in a utility.
• Return UtilException on error - this should be the only checked exception that gets thrown

If state becomes an issue, you may want to use a service class to provide the functionality you need. See the Metacat Service Based Architecture page for more information on services.