TRANSPARENT TYPE-BASED OBJECT AUGMENTATION BY ORTHOGONAL FUNCTIONALITY

Tools and techniques are described for transparently and safely augmenting the functionality of objects in an existing collection of objects. One approach automatically creates a dynamic interface for a known object type T, having the same type signature as T. Augmentations which implement the interface are then recognized, and an interpreted or compiled code environment is adjusted to invoke their functionality, which is orthogonal to the indicated functionality of type T. An application program executing in the adjusted environment automatically and transparently generates an instance of each augmentation, and the augmentations are composed to run when the original object of type T is accessed. Some suitable orthogonal functionalities include: data logging, event logging, data validation, event validation, localization of strings, localization of a display format, administrator alerts, inspection of data without alteration of the data, malware scanning, scanning for a code security vulnerability, or reporting on one of the foregoing.