Types of Advice in Aspect-Oriented Programming

AOP Terminologies

• Aspect: A class that implements enterprise application concerns that cut across multiple classes, such as transaction management.
• Join point: A specific point in the application, such as method execution, exception handling, or changing object variable values. In Spring AOP, a join point is always the execution of a method.
• Advice: Actions taken for a particular joint point.
• Pointcut: Expressions that are matched with a joint point to determine whether advice needs to be executed or not, identifying specific events with which advice should be associated.

AOP Advice Types

• Before Advice: Runs before the execution of join point methods, using the @Before annotation.
• After Returning Advice: Executes only if the join point method executes normally, using the @AfterReturning annotation.
• After Throwing Advice: Executes only when the join point method throws an exception, using the @AfterThrowing annotation.
• Around Advice: Surrounds the join point method, allowing the choice to execute the join point method or not, using the @Around annotation.

AOP Benefits

• Centralize concerns implementation
• Intercept method calls
• Inject new behavior
• More reusable code
• Cleaner code
• Write less code
• More maintainable
• Read less code
• More concise and easy to understand

AOP Problems

• Code tangling
• Code scattering
• Poor traceability
• High-coupling
• Boilerplate code
• Difficult to decompose