Re: [aspectj-users] Review of "Eclipse AspectJ"

[pope <alexandru.popescu@xxxxxxxxx>]

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[quote Adrian Powell::on 1/17/2005 12:13 AM]
| I just finished the new "Eclipse AspectJ" by the AspectJ team and
| thought this group might be interested in hearing about it.
| Congradulations to all of the authors, by the way - it is an impressive
| work.  But I'm getting ahead of myself...
|
| Title:  "Eclipse AspectJ: Aspect-Oriented Programming with AspectJ and
| the Eclipse AspectJ Development Tools"
| Authors: Adrian Colyer, Andy Clement, George Harley, and Matthew Webster
| Publisher: Addison-Wesley
| Copyright: 2005, Pearson Educational Inc.
| Details:
| http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0321245873/102-7986454-6009739
|
| (Disclaimer: like the authors, I also work for IBM.  I do not work with
| them directly and do not speak for anyone other than myself.)
|
| In Part 1, "Introducing Eclipse, AspectJ and AJDT", we are led through
| the building of a prototype insurance application (SimpleInsurance).
| Along the way, we are introduced to Eclipse, the AspectJ language and
| the AspectJ Development Tools (AJDT).  The aspects are not presented as
| pre-built, but we get to see how they are selected, written, refactored
| and, even debugged.  I found the discussion interesting, and saw new
| ways to use the tooling to prevent problems, but it did mean that even
| simple features went through a lot of hoops which were not always clear
| at the time.  Thrown into the mix were a number of side-bars which
| explained the development philosophy and architecture behind AspectJ to
| a depth that I have only glimpsed in some of the mailing list
| discussions.  I am using AspectJ and some of these sidebars took me
| several minutes to digest.  I don't like to think about how a genuine
| newcomer would react.  Thrown into the mix were screen captures of
| simple wizards and instructions on how to save files, making for some
| unintentionally funny contrasts.
|
| In Part 2, "The AspectJ Language", things calm down as we go back to the
| beginning and cover the AspectJ language in full detail.  As one would
| expect, they have produced the clearest and most comprehensive overview
| of the language I have seen.  Everything is explained, generally using
| code snippets and object-interaction diagrams to reinforce their
| points.  For complex issues, there are a number of sidebars which delve
| into the design of AspectJ.  I learned many new things, not only about
| AspectJ but about the Java language itself.
|
| Finally, in Part 3, "Putting it All Together", we are able to get into
| the "meat" of AOP and discuss how to develop our own AO application.  We
| get to see how to adopt AspectJ, how to develop with aspects, and how to
| design applications with AO.  Armed with a richer understanding of
| AspectJ, we take a look back at the insurance application that we worked
| on in Part 1 and see what benefits we've achieved.  We briefly revisit
| the discussion about integrating AspectJ with Hibernate, and get to see
| how we would use Spring to improve our solution even further.  There is
| great stuff here, but my only problem with this section is that there is
| just too much material to cover in the 100 pages it gets.  As they say,
| a whole book could be written on this topic (any takers?).
|
|
| I couldn't help comparing this book to "AspectJ In Action", though the
| two are quite different in many ways.  "Eclipse AspectJ" definitely
| contains the most in-depth information about AspectJ and the AJDT.
| Using the same example (the SimpleInsurance application) throughout
| meant that we can see AspectJ being used in many different parts of
| development.  There are many aspects in "Eclipse AspectJ" which I am
| keen to use in my applications.  The problem is that I'm still debating
| with colleagues at work if I *should*.  Where "AspectJ In Action" spent
| some time explaining different patterns and showing where different
| aspects should be used and where they should not, "Eclipse AspectJ"
| presents the tools but leaves the rest up to us.  To my mind, that is
| the most important difference between the two.  While "Eclipse AspectJ"
| cannot be matched for sheer depth, it does not always provide enough
| context to be used by new AspectJ developers.  It is a good resource for
| existing AspectJ developers and will give you a complete understanding
| of the language and the tooling, but will be standing beside "AspectJ In
| Action" on my bookshelf.
|
|
|
| Contents:
| Part 1: Introducing Eclipse, AspectJ, and AJDT
|   Ch 1: Getting Started
|   Ch 2: First Steps in AJDT
|   Ch 3: Extending the Application
|   Ch 4: More AJDT
|
| Part 2: The AspectJ Language
|   Ch 5: An Overview of AspectJ
|   Ch 6: Straight to the Point
|   Ch 7: Take My Advice
|   Ch 8: Inter-Type Declarations
|   Ch 9: Aspects
|   Ch 10: Using the AspectJ API
|
| Part 3: Putting it All Together
|   Ch 11: Adopting AspectJ
|   Ch 12: Advanced AJDT
|   Ch 13: Aspect-Oriented Design
|   Appendix A: Command-Line AspectJ
|   Appendix B: AspectJ Language Syntax
|   Appendix C: Next Steps
|   Appendix D: AJDT Icon Reference
|
|
|
| _______________________________________________
| aspectj-users mailing list
| aspectj-users@xxxxxxxxxxx
| http://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users
|
Thanks Adrian! It is nice to see that AJ has already complementary books!

- --
:pope
[the_mindstorm]
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