[aosd-discuss] motivation for call vs execution pointcut/join point distinction

[Rickard Öberg]

Alexandre Vasseur wrote:
> Last time I was discussing AOP concepts with some C guy, I came
> accross a suprising feeling. Why do we need to distinguish call from
> execution join point in AOP implementations like AspectJ, AspectWerkz
> etc. ? Wouldn't that be tied to the view we have coming from source
> level / bytecode level instead of general method dispatching ?

Well, don't know about the theoretical side of this (and am not sure I 
care either), but personally I simply have a bunch of usecases where I 
need to distinguish between them. For example, if I have a locking 
aspect I only want it to apply on "call" and not "execution" (no point 
in locking within an object since by then it is already locked). And 
sometimes I *do* want "call" and "execution" to be the same (e.g. 
transaction demarcation). As simple as that.

/Rickard