Aspects in the Business Layer

While I was at No Fluff, Just Stuff Boston this last weekend, I got into a conversation with a couple of interesting guys (sorry, fellows, I didn't get your names) at lunch who had attended my Enterprise Debugging session. This always happens at No Fluff, Just Stuff events -- the conversations with other speakers and attendees at lunch and in the halls is at least as interesting as the talks. Anyway, we started talking about aspects and how mainstream they are slowly becoming. I stated my position (which I blogged about earlier) that I believe that they will gradually make their way from the boundary layer into the business layer much like OOP did (see my previous blog entry about this theory). Neither of them bought it -- they were both convinced that aspects are forever going to reside in the boundary layer.

Then, I challenged them: name some cross-cutting business concerns. We thought about it for about 30 seconds and came up with several: legal, regulatory, sales & marketing. These are business concepts that cross-cut the traditional business layer, needing just a little attention in lots of places. And that's why aspects exist. This re-affirms my thinking that we will see this type of code more and more as aspects become more mainstream. It took 1 believer and 2 skeptics about a minute to find where aspects fit outside the business layer. Imagine what we would find if we actually put some effort into it!