I couldn't resist making a Common Lisp version. DB, REST and SECURITY are imaginary packages. CLSQL is an existing library for interfacing with databases. You

I couldn't resist making a Common Lisp version. DB, REST and SECURITY are imaginary packages. CLSQL is an existing library for interfacing with databases. You define the meat of your code with a primary method: (defmethod get-user-preferences (id) (user-preferences (db:get-user id))) Then, you add security checks with an AROUND qualifier; CALL-NEXT-METHOD is a little like super() in Java, but with multiple-inheritance and method qualifiers (around, before, after, ...): (defmethod get-user-preferences :around ((id integer)) (if (security:allowedp id) (call-next-method) rest:+FORBIDDEN+)) You can add logging, executed before the primary method, after security checks. (defmethod get-user-preferences :before (id) (log "Getting user preferences for id ~S." id)) Likewise, you could log the outcome of the security check; (defmethod security:allowedp :around (id) (let ((result (call-next-method))) (log "Access ~:[denied~;granted~] for id ~S." result id) result))) Also, you can wrap the call to db:get-user with the appropriate dynamic context where a database connection is open (it could be from a pool, or something else) within a transaction. (defmethod db:get-user :around ((id integer)) (clsql:with-database (db *database*) (clsql:with-transaction (:database db) (call-next-method)))) I did not find an equivalent for the read-only flag. If more methods need to follow this pattern, it might be preferable to define them directly with a macro which always open the connection and the transaction. The WITH-X macro ensure that transactions and connections are properly handled when unwinding the stack.