Operating system support for inter-domain type checking

Most existing file based operating systems tend to provide very little in the way of type related information about applications to the user. Instead, the user is required to construct applications that perform their own type checking, relying on information about existing programs and data to be obtained via other means, such as manual pages, or by visual inspection of source code. This lack of public type related information has, by and large, prevented the benefits of browsing technology as found in some persistent language systems to be delivered to the operating system level. A technique is examined in which detailed type information about operating system entities may be recorded, thus enabling more informative user interfaces, tools and applications to be constructed.