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Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring
Aspect-oriented Programming (AOP) complements Object-oriented Programming (OOP) by providing another way of thinking about program structure. The key unit of modularity in OOP is the class, whereas in AOP the unit of modularity is the aspect. Aspects enable the modularization of concerns (such as transaction management) that cut across multiple types and objects. (Such concerns are often termed "crosscutting" concerns in AOP literature.)
One of the key components of Spring is the AOP framework. While the Spring IoC container does not depend on AOP (meaning you do not need to use AOP if you don’t want to), AOP complements Spring IoC to provide a very capable middleware solution.
AOP is used in the Spring Framework to:
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Provide declarative enterprise services. The most important such service is declarative transaction management.
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Let users implement custom aspects, complementing their use of OOP with AOP.
If you are interested only in generic declarative services or other pre-packaged declarative middleware services such as pooling, you do not need to work directly with Spring AOP, and can skip most of this chapter. |