CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javajakarta-eeaopaspectj
Tushar Tarkas
Tushar Tarkas

Reputation: 1612

Use of AspectJ for debugging Enterprise Java applications

The idea is to utilize AOP for designing applications/tools to debug/view execution flow of an application at runtime. To begin with, a simple data(state) dump at the start and end of method invocation will do the necessary data collection.

The target is not application developers but high level business analyst or high level support people for whom a execution flow could prove helpful. The runtime application flow can also be useful in reducing the learning curve of an application for new developers especially in configuration loaded systems.

I wanted to know if there already exists such tools/applications which could be used. Or better, if this makes sense, then is there a better way to achieve this.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 572

Answers (2)

James Black
James Black

Reputation: 41858

You could write your own aspects, as suggested by ramnivas, but to prepare for the requests from the users, you may want to just have the aspects compiled into the application, so that you don't have to take a hit at run-time, and then they could just select which execution flows or method groups they are interested in, and you just call the server and set some variable to give them the information desired.

Writing the aspects is easy, but to limit recompiling, you may want to get an idea what the users will want, for example, if they want to have a log of every call made from the time a webservice is called until it gets to the database, then you can build that in, but it would be easier to know this up-front.

Otherwise the aspect does nothing, if the variable is not set, and perhaps unset the variable when finished.

You could also have where they can pick which type of logging and for which user, which may lead to more useful information.

Upvotes: 1

ramnivas
ramnivas

Reputation: 1284

You could start with Spring Insight (http://www.springsource.org/insight) and add your own plugins to collect data appropriate for business analysts/support staff. If that doesn't meet needs, you can write your own custom aspects. It is not that hard.

Upvotes: 3

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