Spring AOP (Aspect Oriented Programming) is similar to OOPs (Object Oriented Programming) as it also provides modularity.
In AOP key unit is aspects or concerns which are nothing but stand-alone modules in the application. Some aspects have centralized code but other aspects may be scattered or tangled code like in the case of logging or transactions. These scattered aspects are called cross-cutting concern.
A cross-cutting concern such as transaction management, authentication, logging, security etc is a concern that could affect the whole application and should be centralized in one location in code as much as possible for security and modularity purposes.
AOP provides platform to dynamically add these cross-cutting concerns before, after or around the actual logic by using simple pluggable configurations.
This results in easy maintainenance of code. Concerns can be added or removed simply by modifying configuration files and therefore without the need for recompiling complete sourcecode.
There are 2 types of implementing Spring AOP:
- Using XML configuration files
- Using AspectJ annotation style
