AspectJ in Action: Practical Aspect-Oriented Programming (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A valuable book to support AOP . . . delivers what it promises." -- Computing Reviews

"A very good resource for both people starting to learn AOP and AspectJ and experienced AOP programmers." -- JavaRanch.com

"I would highly recommend AspectJ in Action." -- TheServerSide.com

"You will get the most bang for your buck from Ramnivas' work . . . this book lends itself well to future reuse." -- Freeroller.net

Product Description

Modularizing code into objects cannot be fully achieved in pure OOP. In practice some objects must deal with aspects that are not their main business. A method to modularize aspects-and benefit from a clean maintainable result-is called aspect-oriented programming. AspectJ is an open-source Java extension and compiler designed for AOP development. Now integrated with Eclipse, NetBeans, JBuilder, and other IDEs, AspectJ v1.1 is ready for the real world.

It is time to move from AOP theory and toy examples to AOP practice and real applications. With this unique book you can make that move. It teaches you AOP concepts, the AspectJ language, and how to develop industrial-strength systems. It shows you examples which you can reuse. It unleashes the true power of AOP through unique patterns of AOP design. When you are done, you will be eager-and able-to build new systems, and enhance your existing ones, with the help of AOP.

What’s Inside:

• What is aspect-oriented programming?

• How AspectJ works with JAAS, Jess, log4j, Ant, JTA, POJOs
• Best practices and design patterns
• How to implement policy enforcement resource pooling and caching thread-safety authentication and authorization transaction management business rules

Ramnivas Laddad is an AOP and AspectJ authority. With his writings, he has contributed to the general awareness of AOP and has contributed to features now incorporated in AspectJ Version 1.1. Ramnivas lives in Sunnyvale, California.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Manning Publications (July 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1930110936
• ISBN-13: 978-1930110939
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #624,455 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best AOP book I have seen so far, May 11, 2004

By	Max Loukianov (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews

I have got this book at local Austin Java User Group meeting. First impression: different cover. Most of Manning books are either greenish or almost black-and-white. This one is yellow.

Part 1 provides really good introduction into AOP. This is the first book I have read on AOP; all stuff I have seen before was online or magazine articles. One interesting fact is that this book took a while to consume, compared to the usual two-week cycle I have for technical books. I guess the reason is that the book has more substance than most of the techincal books and Mannigs does not try to pad their books with API references and other stuff that can be easily found online. After the chapter goes through AOP concepts, it explains AspectJ in application to those concepts. Basic syntax as well as some advanced techniques are explained.

Part 2 has examples of basic applications of AspectJ. Of course it starts with the mandatory logging implemented using AOP. Not a very good example in general, since logging is not really a cross-cutting concern, but works for illustration purposes. Other two application areas discussed in this part are implementation policy enforcement and optimization (pooling and caching examples). Policy enorcement part is really interesting, especially if you are into call patterns.

In general, every part follows the same pattern: first the author discusses the conventional approach, then explains challenges of the conventional solution, provides AspectJ-based solution, and gives one or two examples. Very clean language, easy to follow.

Part 3 discusses advanced applications of AspectJ. First it delves into design patterns and idioms of AOP; it's not by any means AspectJ-specific, so would be useful for any AOP implementation. Examples of patterns are providing thread-safe implementations using AspectJ, implementing security (very interesting discussion on JAAS), transaction management, and implementing business rules using AspectJ. The part ends with AspectJ usage in different development phases.

Two appendices: description of AspectJ compiler and Ant integration - only 15 pages for both. Useful as a reference.

Overall impression: an excellent book. Definitely worth reading, even if you are not into AOP yet.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From basics to design patterns, October 20, 2003

By	Robert Wenner (Bonn, Germany) - See all my reviews

Ramnivas Laddad wrote a comprehensive book on AOP with the focus on AspectJ. He deals with AOP and AspectJ basics, explains the (sometimes fine) differences in advice declarations, and cleans up the myths and prejudices on AOP.

Going further Ramnivas uses real-life examples to show step by step how to use Aspects in your daily work. He explains how to transform a pure Java based solution to a cleaner, more structured AspectJ solution. The reader can see that the AspectJ solution is more elegant and can always understand how Ramnivas came to his solutions. Ramnivas explains this for cruicial topics most developers have to face, for example logging or thread safety.

Special bonus is the chapter on aspect design patterns. Ramnivas shows four design patterns, that don't exist in the non-AOP world. They are quite useful in AOP, though, and AFAIK there is no other source for this important information.

"AspectJ in action" is a book for beginners as well as for advanced AspectJ programmers. It is well written and easy to understand. The real-world examples allow you to transfer the solutions on a 1:1 basis to your project and thus try in real life how aspects work for you.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Real uses for AOP, August 9, 2004

By	David Bock "javaguy" (Hamilton, VA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I met the author of this book this weekend, and saw him give a presentation on this material. Finally, a book that shows real uses for AOP.
I have been watching AspectJ since I first saw it about a year ago. My first impression was that it was 'cool', but was worried about giving developers more rope with which to hang themselves. Yes, it was cool, but the most practical examples you would see in demos were thing like 'logging'. I was worried that it would just lead more more ways for junior engineers to 'convolute the code', without bringing much benefit for that risk.
The material in this book, ALONG WITH the support the author had from the Eclipse IDE changed my mind. Finally, there were some real examples involving transaction support, JAAS, exception handling, and more. Furthermore, he addressed these topics in the real-world sense of refactoring existing code to prove his points.
If you aren't using an IDE that gives you some support, then I still have my concerns about 'convoluting' your code; but I am more convinced than ever that AOP concepts are worth putting into my mental toolkit. I have no doubt that the way aspects 'inject' behavior into code will reduce our development time, and make our code behave more consistently (no errors because of inconsistencies in the way common things are handled). If you can add one more ball to the things you 'mentally juggle' while developing, add AOP concepts. This book will help.