Patent ID: 8479050

Claim:
A computer program product in a non-transitory computer readable medium for selectively performing operations on data, the computer program product comprising: first instructions for identifying an operation to be performed on data to form an identified operation; second instructions for determining that metadata for use in validating data type is associated with the data on which the identified operation is to be performed; third instructions, responsive to the metadata being associated with the data, for identifying the data type for the data on which the identified operation is to be performed from the metadata; fourth instructions for determining whether the identified operation can be performed on the data based on the identified data type; fifth instructions for performing the identified operation on the data if the identified data type allows for the identified operation to be performed; and sixth instructions for generating an error without performing the identified operation if the identified operation cannot be performed on the data based on the identified data type of the data, wherein the processor selectively performs the operations based on the identified data type of the data and wherein the first instructions, the second instructions, the third instructions, the fourth instructions, the fifth instructions and the sixth instructions are stored in the non-transitory computer readable medium.