What should get method return types be??

I haven't tried to compile the latest BasicPortal code, but I'm confused
how you aren't getting compile errors since it looks like all of the get
methods return type String yet the getValue(String s) method called in
each getter looks like it returns type Object (signature in BaseBean),
yet I do not see a conversion to String being done anywhere.

Should the return types in the BaseBean subclasses be type Object instead
of String? (I understand all the setters should be String).

I'm trying to best figure out how to handle different data types that
could be set in my LabelValueBean. Since this is going to be a generic
bean that will handle different sql result queries the methods could
return possibly different datatypes (Integer, Double, etc). 

The easiest (and it seems to work fine) is to simply return type Object
for the getters. The JSP tags seem to handle type Object ok (I'm assuming they
are just applying toString() method to the Object).

Not sure on "best practice", though.

Thanks,

-- 
Rick