How can Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) solve Cross-Cutting Concerns of your application.

In software development, adhering to key principles like the separation of concerns is paramount for crafting a well-structured and maintainable application. Employing design principles and patterns becomes crucial in achieving a clean architecture that functions seamlessly across various scenarios.

One prevalent concern that often arises, especially in the development of large and complex applications demanding continuous monitoring and logging, is the concept of “Cross-Cutting Concerns” (CCCs).

What is Cross-Cutting Concerns (CCCs)?

Cross-Cutting Concerns (CCCs) in software development refer to aspects of a program that affect multiple modules or components, often cutting across different layers of the application. These concerns are challenging to encapsulate within a single module or module hierarchy due to their pervasive nature.

These concerns “cut across” the typical organization of code, impacting various parts of the system. They often involve functionalities or requirements that are not specific to a particular module but are essential for the overall functioning, maintainability, and performance of the entire application. Addressing Cross-Cutting Concerns effectively is crucial for maintaining a clean and modular codebase.

Here is an example of Cross-Cutting Concern:

Logging is one of the cross-cutting concern that you can have for your application as Spring Boot applications are built upon layers and each layer has it’s own responsibility to do within application. These layers require to be logged so that in any case of error you can easily track what failed and solve it but it’s difficult to log every layer with one instance of logging and it requires a different approach to do that.

Besides of logging, here are other cross-cutting concerns you may have within your application:

Security

Security is also a cross-cutting concern as it used within different layers of application for authentication & authorization and it should be handled and monitored for every layer that is used.

Transaction management

Transaction management is a cross-cutting concern in Spring Boot because it spans various parts of an application (Controller layer, Business layer, Data Access layer), ensuring consistency and integrity in data operations.

Error handling

As logging, error handling is also a cross-cutting concern as we should handle errors for every layer because of different errors that can be happened.

Caching

Caching is considered a cross-cutting concern in software development because it often involves storing and retrieving data across various parts of an application, impacting multiple modules or components.

Performance Monitoring

Performance monitoring is a cross-cutting concern in software development as it involves tracking and analyzing the overall performance of an application, impacting multiple modules or components.

There are also various examples of cross-cutting concerns but these ones are mostly you may have in your application.

If you do not handle Cross-Cutting Concerns (CCC) you may have difficulties in monitoring and handling your application when it increases complexity of business side but you can solve them by using Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP).

What is Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP)?

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a programming paradigm that enables modularization and encapsulation of concerns in a software system. It allows developers to define and apply aspects, which are units of modularization, to separate and encapsulate specific functionalities or features in a program.

The primary goal is to enhance code organization and maintainability by promoting a more modular and modularized structure.

How does Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) work?

Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) works by providing a mechanism to modularize and encapsulate concerns that would otherwise be scattered across different parts of a program.

To make things clear, let’s go with logging example that how you can solve it with AOP.

Besides of OOP, AOP works with aspects. First of all, you should create an aspect to encapsulate a specific concern. This aspect will handle your concern with advices and pointcuts.

What are advices and pointcuts?

Advice is the code that will be executed at specific points of program, they are also known as Join Points. There are three types of advice or join point:

• Before advice: The point where function is called.
• Around advice: The point where function is in execution.
• After advice: The point after execution is finished and it has subtypes like: AfterReturns or AfterThrows which one is for a successful return and other one for a throwed exception.

These advices or join points will allow you to track the execution of a function or operation in application and allow you to monitor it easier in different aspects.

Pointcuts are set of joinpoints used in aspects, you may create pointcuts that will be executed and use them in advices.

So idea is to create an logging aspect that will use advices or join points based on your business requirements and it will have an logging logic within your application to track and monitor activities.

How can I use Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) in my applications?

Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) is supported from various languages, here is some of the languages and their dependencies for AOP.

• Java: AspectJ dependency.
• .NET: PostSharp
• Python: AspectLib
• JavaScript: Aspect.js
• C++: AspectC++

In conclusion, Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) is not a substitution for OOP or any types of programming but just a programming way that may solve some problems of OOP during development. You can easily use it to solve your cross-cutting concerns and handle them easier.

Thanks for reading :)