Spring AOP vs AspectJ

Question

I am under the impression that Spring AOP is best used for application specific tasks such as security, logging, transactions, etc. as it uses custom Java5 annotations as a framework. However, AspectJ seems to be more friendly design-patterns wise.

Can anyone highlight the various pros and cons of using Spring AOP vs AspectJ in a Spring application?

Answer 1

Spring-AOP Pros

• It is simpler to use than AspectJ, since you don't have to use LTW (load-time weaving) or the AspectJ compiler.
• It uses the Proxy pattern and the Decorator pattern

Spring-AOP Cons

• This is proxy-based AOP, so basically you can only use method-execution joinpoints.
• Aspects aren't applied when calling another method within the same class.
• There can be a little runtime overhead.
• Spring-AOP cannot add an aspect to anything that is not created by the Spring factory

AspectJ Pros

• This supports all joinpoints. This means you can do anything.
• There is less runtime overhead than that of Spring AOP.

AspectJ Cons

• Be careful. Check if your aspects are weaved to only what you wanted to be weaved.
• You need extra build process with AspectJ Compiler or have to setup LTW (load-time weaving)