Declarations, Initialization, and Scoping - SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java Platform SE6 - page 136

Method hiding is subtly different than method overriding. When a method is
overridden, the child version of the method always executes at runtime. Technically, a static
method cannot be overridden because you can still invoke the static method in the parent
class.
For example, the following FictionBook class contains the same static method
getCounter that is declared in its parent class Book :
1. //Book.java
2. public class Book {
3. private static int counter = 0;
4. public static int getCounter() {
5. System.out.println(“Inside Book”);
6. return ++ counter;
7. }
8. }
1. //FictionBook.java
2. public class FictionBook extends Book {
3. public static int getCounter() {
4. System.out.println(“Inside FictionBook”);
5. return -1;
6. }
7.
8. public static void main(String [] args) {
9. System.out.println(Book.getCounter());
10. System.out.println(FictionBook.getCounter());
11. }
12. }
Inside main , getCounter is invoked using both Book and FictionBook . If getCounter was
truly overridden, then the output would be “ Inside FictionBook ” for both method calls.
However, as you can see by the output here, the getCounter method in Book executes from
line 9:
Inside Book
1
Inside FictionBook
-1
The getCounter method in Book is referred to as a hidden method, which is probably
not the best term to use because the method is not really hidden at all. You can invoke
getCounter in Book at any time using the syntax Book.getCounter , as shown in Figure 2.12.