From time to time the question has come up:
Do we need to have any standardization in the AOP space?
Of course, the first question that comes to mind, is what do you want to standardize?
The AOP Alliance got together several years ago, and gives you an API for dynamic proxy impls to play nice together (you can reuse advice and such with Spring AOP, dynaop, AspectWerkz, etc). However, the effort has stalled to some extend (maybe because it has done its job).
I think people wanted standardization because they wanted to be able to plugin different AOP systems like dynaop/Spring AOP/AspectWerkz/AspectJ. But we haven’t been in a place to do that yet, as the different platforms were really very different. We also don’t want to restrict to a low denominator too early, as we need to allow different frameworks to experiment and push things.
The AspectJ and AspectWerkz merger may well be the end of standards talk. When AspectJ 5 comes out it will be a top solution. We will have the full power of the AspectJ semantic model, yet for those who want it, they can use a Java/annotations view of things versus the AspectJ language.
AspectJ 5 will become the absolute de facto standard. I think it will be great for AOP as people will be able to get stuck in, and move on to more interesting problems, such as practices for using AOP, and even the holy grail of reuseable, REALLY USEFUL aspects :)
