Patent ID: 7409532

Claim:
A method in a data processing system for extending operations of an application, the method comprising: responsive to running a primary operation, identifying all pre and post operations based on predefined metadata and an environment context of the application, wherein identifying comprises: responsive to running the primary operation, determining if a cycle is present in an execution path of the primary operation; if no cycle is present, populating an extended operation cache with cached extended operation identifiers, wherein populating comprises: reading a plurality of operation extensions for a given primary operation identifier; determining if each corresponding operation extension in the plurality of operation extensions defines a corresponding at least one of a pre or post operation identifier; associating the corresponding at least one of pre or post operation identifier with a corresponding function group identifier; for each corresponding operation extension in the plurality of operation extensions, creating a corresponding primary operation record for each operation extension, and placing the corresponding primary operation record in the extended operation cache; and wherein identifying further comprises: identifying a plurality of pre operation identifiers and post operation identifiers from the cached extended operation identifiers; and wherein the method further comprises: recursively running all pre operations in a predefined order; executing the primary operation; and recursively running all post operations in a predefined order.