Declaring Constants

PeopleSoft recommends that if constants are inextricably linked to a class, you should define them within that class. If the constants are more general, potentially used by multiple classes, consolidate the constants into a constants class at application-level or package-level.

Message catalog set and message numbers are good candidates to centralize into a single constants class. It can improve the readability of code and make it easier to maintain these values.

For example, you can define a constant MSG_SET_NBR, and then define constant values for each message that explain a little about what the message represents (like REQUIRED_VALUE_MISSING, UNIMPLEMENTED_METHOD, or INSUFFICIENT_PRIVILEGES).