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Choosing which AOP Declaration Style to Use

Once you have decided that an aspect is the best approach for implementing a given requirement, how do you decide between using Spring AOP or AspectJ and between the Aspect language (code) style, the @AspectJ annotation style, or the Spring XML style? These decisions are influenced by a number of factors including application requirements, development tools, and team familiarity with AOP.

Spring AOP or Full AspectJ?

Use the simplest thing that can work. Spring AOP is simpler than using full AspectJ, as there is no requirement to introduce the AspectJ compiler / weaver into your development and build processes. If you only need to advise the execution of operations on Spring beans, Spring AOP is the right choice. If you need to advise objects not managed by the Spring container (such as domain objects, typically), you need to use AspectJ. You also need to use AspectJ if you wish to advise join points other than simple method executions (for example, field get or set join points and so on).

When you use AspectJ, you have the choice of the AspectJ language syntax (also known as the "code style") or the @AspectJ annotation style. If aspects play a large role in your design, and you are able to use the AspectJ Development Tools (AJDT) plugin for Eclipse, the AspectJ language syntax is the preferred option. It is cleaner and simpler because the language was purposefully designed for writing aspects. If you do not use Eclipse or have only a few aspects that do not play a major role in your application, you may want to consider using the @AspectJ style, sticking with regular Java compilation in your IDE, and adding an aspect weaving phase to your build script.

@AspectJ or XML for Spring AOP?

If you have chosen to use Spring AOP, you have a choice of @AspectJ or XML style. There are various tradeoffs to consider.

The XML style may be most familiar to existing Spring users, and it is backed by genuine POJOs. When using AOP as a tool to configure enterprise services, XML can be a good choice (a good test is whether you consider the pointcut expression to be a part of your configuration that you might want to change independently). With the XML style, it is arguably clearer from your configuration which aspects are present in the system.

The XML style has two disadvantages. First, it does not fully encapsulate the implementation of the requirement it addresses in a single place. The DRY principle says that there should be a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation of any piece of knowledge within a system. When using the XML style, the knowledge of how a requirement is implemented is split across the declaration of the backing bean class and the XML in the configuration file. When you use the @AspectJ style, this information is encapsulated in a single module: the aspect. Secondly, the XML style is slightly more limited in what it can express than the @AspectJ style: Only the "singleton" aspect instantiation model is supported, and it is not possible to combine named pointcuts declared in XML. For example, in the @AspectJ style you can write something like the following:

Java
Kotlin

@Pointcut("execution(* get*())")
public void propertyAccess() {}

@Pointcut("execution(com.xyz.Account+ *(..))")
public void operationReturningAnAccount() {}

@Pointcut("propertyAccess() && operationReturningAnAccount()")
public void accountPropertyAccess() {}

@Pointcut("execution(* get*())")
fun propertyAccess() {}

@Pointcut("execution(com.xyz.Account+ *(..))")
fun operationReturningAnAccount() {}

@Pointcut("propertyAccess() && operationReturningAnAccount()")
fun accountPropertyAccess() {}

In the XML style you can declare the first two pointcuts:

<aop:pointcut id="propertyAccess"
		expression="execution(* get*())"/>

<aop:pointcut id="operationReturningAnAccount"
		expression="execution(com.xyz.Account+ *(..))"/>

The downside of the XML approach is that you cannot define the accountPropertyAccess pointcut by combining these definitions.

The @AspectJ style supports additional instantiation models and richer pointcut composition. It has the advantage of keeping the aspect as a modular unit. It also has the advantage that the @AspectJ aspects can be understood (and thus consumed) both by Spring AOP and by AspectJ. So, if you later decide you need the capabilities of AspectJ to implement additional requirements, you can easily migrate to a classic AspectJ setup. In general, the Spring team prefers the @AspectJ style for custom aspects beyond simple configuration of enterprise services.