It's AOP after OOP!

BANGALORE: IBM is one of the first software developers to adopt the new programming technique AOP and put it to use in its products. Researchers at Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research Center have been working on this new technology for nearly 12 years, and IBM is looking at a time frame of 12-15 months to develop products using AOP. Said an online report.

This new programming technique lets "aspects" or "concerns" that cut across a system to be programmed in modular units and promises to increase programmer productivity, software reliability and quality more than current methods of development like OOP. While OOP works with hierarchical structures, like classes, AOP is used to implement cross-cutting concerns, such as multiobject interactions, distribution and synchronization policies, and design patterns.

Sun Microsystems is working on AOP projects led by Java creator James Gosling. And, BEA Systems Inc., along with Codehaus.org, is working on an AOP project called AspectWerkz.