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Ramnivas is ready to take you to other dimensions in part two of his articles in the AOP@Work IBM developerWorks series: AOP and metadata: A perfect match, Part 2: Multidimensional interfaces with metadata.

In the first half of this article, I introduced the basics of the new Java™ metadata facility and explained how and where AOP's join point model could be most beneficially fortified by metadata annotation. I also gave an overview of existing metadata support in three leading AOP systems: AspectWerkz, AspectJ, and JBoss AOP. I touched on the impact of metadata on an AOP system's modularity, and concluded with a refactoring example demonstrating the gradual introduction of metadata annotation into an AOP system.

In this second half of the article, I'll suggest a novel way to look at metadata as a pathway into multidimensional signature space. This approach has a practical application in untangling element signatures and is also conceptually useful for designing annotation types, even for developers who do not practice AOP. I will also focus on the most beneficial use of metadata annotation in aspect-oriented programming. Among other things, I will demonstrate an effective use of AOP to reduce the loss of modularity that is sometimes associated with metadata annotation. I'll conclude the article with a set of guidelines for determining when and how best to use metadata. I'll also consider the effects of adding a metadata facility on the adoption of AOP.

A very interesting piece, and shows us that AOP and annotations *can* be a good marriage.