Aspectj Cookbook (Paperback)

~ Russell Miles (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

When Object Oriented programming (OO) first appeared, it was a revelation. OO gave developers the ability to create software that was more flexible and robust, but as time went on and applications became more sophisticated, too, certain areas of "traditional" OO architectures were found wanting. Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) addresses those issues by extending the OO approach even further.

Many developers are interested in AOP--especially in AspectJ, the open source extension of the Java programming language that explicitly supports the AOP approach. Yet, although AspectJ is included with Eclipse, the increasingly popular open source IDE for Java, finding a practical and non-theoretical way to learn this language and other AOP tools and techniques has been a real problem.

Until now. The AspectJ Cookbook offers a hands-on solution--in fact, several--with a wide variety of code recipes for solving day-to-day design and coding problems using AOP's unique approach.

AOP allows the global properties of a program to determine how it's compiled into an executable program. Before AOP, important program design decisions were difficult to capture in actual code. Instead, the implementation of those design decisions--known as "aspects"--were scattered throughout, resulting in "tangled" code that was hard to develop and maintain. AOP has been compared to the manufacturing of cloth, in which threads are automatically interwoven. Without AOP, programmers must stitch the threads by hand.

The AspectJ Cookbook shows readers why, and how, common Java development problems can be solved by using AOP techniques. With our popular problem-solution-discussion format, the book presents real world examples to demonstrate that AOP is more than just a concept; it's a development process that will benefit users in an immediate and visible manner.

If you're interested in how AOP is changing the way software is developed, and how you can use AspectJ to make code more modular, easier to develop, maintain, evolve and deploy, this is the book that really delivers.

About the Author

Russell Miles works as a software engineer for General Dynamics UK where he works with Java and Distributed Systems, although his passion at the moment is Aspect Orientation and in particular AspectJ. To ensure he has as little spare time as possible Russ contributes to various open source projects whilst working on books for O'Reilly and is currently studying at Oxford University in England for an MSc in Software Engineering.

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (December 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596006543
• ISBN-13: 978-0596006549
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,400,199 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This is item 26 in The O'Reilly Cookbooks Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Needs more why and less how, January 14, 2005

By	Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

It's always tempting to judge a book by the topic and not the actual content of the book itself, especially with a controversial topic like AOP. I won't do that hear. Though I feel that in a large way the fundamental issue with AOP, which is that it's a technology looking for a problem to solve, is the major problem with this book.

As with the other recipe books this is organized first into chapters around the fundamentals of the topic. Then within each chapter there is a set of problems, which are described, then solved using the technology. The solution is the described in detail and alternatives are provided. But where other recipe books tend to solve real world problems (e.g. connecting to Amazon web services), this book solves problems in the AOP technology itself.

Four chapters of the book are dedicated to implement GoF Design Patterns in AOP. This is interesting content. If you are an AOP enthusiast these sections alone will be worth the price of the book. But if you aren't a true believer you will not find justification for why you should implement the Design Patterns in AOP. You will only find out how they are implement. Take recipe 19.5, "Implementing the Chain of Responsibility Pattern". The problem is stated as, "You want to apply the chain of responsibility pattern using AspectJ." Ok, but why would I want to do that? What is the benefit? What are the drawbacks? This is never discussed.

Obviously a buy for the AOP faithful. Probably a buy for those seriously interested in AOP. But we are all still looking for the book that justifies AOP in terms of solutions to real world customer problems.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars teaches how to use, but look elsewhere for why, February 6, 2005

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

You need to already know the ideas behind aspect orient programming [AOP}, before opening this book. Plus a fluency in Java, by the way. While I have the latter fluency, I'd only met AOP briefly in a few papers.

Under the familiar O'Reilly cookbook format, the book has guidelines on various difficulties you might be having, when running AspectJ. It's a superset of Java. The new syntax is not so difficult to learn. True, it's more involved than writing a new class, that conforms to existing Java syntax. But a good Java programmer should quickly grasp how to implement crosscuts or advice.

As to the broader issue of whether you should use AOP at all, the book is silent. It tells you well how to use AOP in the form of AspectJ. But you need to decide, based on externalities, whether to take it up at all.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars AspectJ, March 1, 2005

By	Frank Chan - See all my reviews

I would say that this is a survival guide more than a cookbook for the people who interested to try the AOP. This is book with a well structure to express its contents by problem-solution-discussion fomat. Reader can find what he need quickly from the book.

For the people who would try AOP the first thing they may concern is the scope of the Aspect J and how weaving the Aspect J into their current application like JSP, Servlet, Java application and also the compatibility with the IDE like Eclipse. The book first introduce these things to give a outlook of the ability of the Aspect J and then it introduce the main concern about capturing join points for the weaving the Aspect J to the application. However, it may be not easy to understand how the capturing join points can be used to solve the programming problem before you read the chapter 17 - 23 which about the application of the Aspect J. In 17 to 19 chapter it show how to use Aspect J to implement the common design pattern. In the final chapter it introduce the Aspect oriented design pattern and you may get the concept about AOP in this chapter

I suggest that the reader may skimming the chapter 17 - 23 first to get the outlook about the concept of AOP and solving problems by AOP.