Upcoming changes make heavy use of C++ metaprogramming.
The intention for this RFE is to cover some basic utilities that would normally be found in the type_traits header of the C++11 standard library and will be required for upcoming work.

Since we do not have C++11 yet, these traits need to be implemented in conservative and portable C++03 and work across all of our compilers, yet be compliant with C++11 traits so that a transition to C++11 can eventually be made.