Industry Case Studies at AOSD 2006

Rob Harrop of Interface21 presented how Spring users were following the three phases of AOP adoption ranging from exploration and enforcement through infrastructure aspects and on to core domain uses. Rob highlighted some interesting examples of Spring users at each phase, ranging from reporting on enforcing architectural policy to using AOP to keep database views current. It is interesting that Rob uses IntelliJ with @AspectJ syntax: his AspectJ users are all on Java 5 and in general he sees projects that are still on 1.3 or that are on 5, but not many on 1.4. Ali Duck presented interesting findings from interviewing real world projects that were using AOP, mostly with great results.

Uwe Hohenstein of Siemens presented using AOP to automatically update database statistics to keep good query performance and Michael Mortensen of Hewlett Packard presented how they are using AOP with frameworks. InfraRED presented their approach to application performance management with AOP, now also using AspectJ 5 load-time weaving. Dean Wampler gave a nice presentation on lessons from his Contract4J tool that uses AspectJ to support Design by Contract. I also presented a case study on how we've been using AspectJ for monitoring UI and system events to improve the UI and to support macros at DaimlerChrysler with car diagnostic tools.

Alex Vasseur presented on BEA’s prototype of AOP support in the VM, an initiative I hope to see them continue investing in. Andy Clement showed the latest and greatest AspectJ Development Tools for Eclipse. Not only do they keep improving but I actually think AJDT is catching up to JDT, which is no mean feat. Those of us who use AJDT often complain about what’s not there, but it’s really impressive how much IS now working.