AspectJ In Action (Manning), by Ramnivas Laddad, which was publicly reviewed on TheServerSide recently, has hit the shelves. Manning would like to thank TSS members for all their valuable feedback during the review process. As a token of their appreciation, they have provided two sample chapters for download from the finished book: Syntax Basics and Authentication & Authorization.

Download Syntax Basics and Authenication & Authorization chapters


About AspectJ In Action
=========================

AspectJ in Action is a practical guide to AOP and AspectJ. The reusable code examples that are provided enable quick implementation of functionality in your system.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part introduces AOP and AspectJ and is helpful to developers wanting to learn or advance their knowledge of AspectJ. The second and third parts present examples of everyday situations in which you can use simple and easy AspectJ solutions to implement common system requirements such as logging, policy enforcement, resource pooling, business rules, thread-safety, authentication and authorization, as well as transaction management.

What's inside:

In-depth coverage of AOP and AspectJ
Design patterns and idioms
Solutions to real-world problems
Much reusable code content
AspectJ version 1.1


You can purchase AspectJ In Action from Manning.com or Amazon.com

Has anybody read this book? Any recommendations for books on AOP in general or AspectJ in particular?

Thanks

I downloaded AJIA a week ago, it is definately worth it. The chapter describing the wormhole and participant patterns alone are worth the price. If you only get one book on AspectJ/AOP this is the one.

I'm a relative newbie to AOP in general and AspectJ specifically, having started looking into it seriously about a month ago. The first book I got to help me through was Mastering AspectJ, and a bit later I got the e-book version of AJIA.

Mastering AspectJ was a bit of a mixed bag for me. Overall it presented the "flavor" of AOP and AspectJ pretty well, did a good job of pacing the material, and had good basic examples of syntax and usage. That was the upside. The downside was horrendous typos and grammatical errors, which skewed the technical content pretty badly in places (working around typos on a subject which is new to you and technical can be a daunting task at times!). The examples were also pretty contrived and often not very realistic. In all, it was a decent introduction (and better than other introductory books I've read on other subjects), but it left me needing alot more meat.

AJIA was exactly what I needed. I haven't scrutinized the book cover to cover, but I have jumped around within it alot and read some areas in detail. What I can say is the following:

 - It's very in-depth
 - The writing style is clean and readable
 - Part 1, about AOP in general and AspectJ syntax/semantics went beyond syntax and simple explanations to describe all of the major language components, what they're for, and how they work in the current implementation.
 - Part 2 and Part 3 are about basic and advanced uses of AspectJ against real world problems. Each of these have alot of depth, and cover details developers regularly hit in real-world problems. For example, "logging" isn't a 2 page logging example, it goes very, very deep into many aspects of logging.
 - The applications sections reference J2EE regularly. Authentication talks about JAAS aspects, transactions talk about JDBC and JTA, and how to use these APIs in conjunction with AspectJ.
 - Fantastic use of diagrams, figures, and annotated code. They solidly add to understanding the content, and are easy to read and very, very clear ("Mastering..." had only mediocre diagrams & code samples by comparison, and the printing/conversion process butchered them in print so they were very hard to read).
 - It covers AspectJ 1.1!

All in all I found the book to really be excellent from all viewpoints for getting into the subject matter from many angles and diving down very deep into it. It's not great as a reference, or for easing into AspectJ - it's a big book and doesn't skimp on narrative and motivations behind designs. For reference/easing into uses "Mastering.." might be a better choice (if you survive the poor editing!). But once you're serious about getting into AOP and start contemplating heavy-duty uses of AspectJ, AJIA is IMHO the book you need to get.

   - Mike

* No, I'm not associated with Ramnivas Ladd or the publisher or anything like that. I'm truly an independent developer who just thought it was a really, really good technical book.

Let me first disclose that I am a Manning author: Bitter EJB, most recently. Aspect J In Action does two things, and does them very well.

1) It makes the case for AOP with surprising clarity and style. This, to me, is critical for every book. The Manning editors can be difficult at times, but that pain does result in books with a clarity and purpose.

2) It puts that basic discussion in context. AspectJ is, of course, the natural place for this discussion to take place.

I expected the second. I did not expect the first. It takes tremendous motivation and passion to make a book of this quality. Kudos to this development team.

Hey,
    I am a newbie to AspectJ. I tried to find an ebook of AspectJ in Action but failed to find it. It would be great if one of you could provide me with a link where i could get a copy of the book.

Suresh,

I believe you can order the ebook from the Manning site http://www.manning.com/laddad/

I'm a relative newbie to AOP in general and AspectJ specifically, having started looking into it seriously about a month ago. The first book I got to help me through was Mastering AspectJ, and a bit later I got the e-book version of AJIA. body building