Custom statistic type created for the Sun ONE Application Server. The goal is to be able to represent changing attribute values that are strings in the form of Statistics. Semantically, it is analogous to a CountStatistic, the only difference being in the value that is returned. Unlike a CountStatistic (which always is unidirectional), this Statistic type is not having any specified direction, simply because there is no natural order. An example of the values that an instance of this statistic type can assume is: A State Statistic which can have "CONNECTED, CLOSED, DISCONNECTED" as the permissible values and the current value can be any one of them (and them only). The permissible values are upto a particular implementation.