Rating of Open Source AOP Frameworks in .Net

Quality of the Methodology adopted

There are different approaches available to achieve AOP in .Net. Each of the available open source AOP frameworks adopted different approaches. Basically AOP can be achieved either at compile time or at runtime. According to me , runtime will be always a overhead when compared to compile time, as it is a one time process.

Details on the available approaches available at :

http://www.ayende.com/Blog/archive/2007/07/02/7-Approaches-for-AOP-in-.Net.aspx

When I was investigating on the details of approach adopted by these open source frameworks, information clarity is available only for some of the frameworks. I had assigned points based on my thought process and perception. It may differ from person to person based on the availability of the information and depth of the research.

Community support

When we choose a particular open source framework for our development projects, unless and otherwise there is a wider community support, we cannot go with it, as it may be a high risk during the course of deployment or in the later stage of production support.

Visibility of any Implementations / Industry-wide adoption

Again, as a part of finalizing architecture for a solution, our clients may be looking for proven case studies / industry wide adoptions of the products that we choose. Same thing is applicable here as well. Availability of proven case studies will provide us some confidence on that framework especially when we go for large scale, enterprise level solution development. In this investigation process, I could rarely see any proven case studies for any of these listed frameworks.

Ease of adoption by developers

This is again subjective and can vary from person to person.

Learning curve required

This is again subjective and can vary from person to person.

Memory Footprint / overhead

This could be a key attribute on rating a particular framework. Only some of the framework’s groups are explicit on memory foot print of their products. As this could be a significant factor affecting the performance and resource consumption especially on large scale deployments, I would suggest the respective framework providers to publish benchmark case studies / lab results, which would provide us good confidence on the framework.

Available version in the market (Is it a RC or still in alpha stage)/ Documentation

Some of the frameworks on its early stages development. Periodical releases of the subsequent versions of the frameworks are the indications of the aggressive development and enthusiasm of the community behind those frameworks. Also, availability of the documentation (API, Conceptual, and Architecture) is a definite need for any framework to understand them clearly.

Guidance for Rating Attributes

• 0 – bad , Not known, Not clear, sufficient information not available

• 1 – To be improved , some info is available

• 2 – Good , sufficient info is available

• 3 – Very Good , no major overhead, no major memory footprint, Excellent info is available