Recently I've been looking into Spring Roo to find ways to speed-up software development as well as reducing plumbing code. In this blog post I will highlight some of the advantages and disadvantages of Spring Roo which I stumbled upon. So don't expect a full featured introduction or tutorial; plenty of those already exist on the internet ;-)

Spring Roo takes on a different approach to code generation compared to other solutions. Instead of generating additional .java files (through the "Generation Gap Pattern") it generates so-called AspectJ inter-type declaration (ITD) .aj source files. Each generated inter-type declaration (ITD) type will "weave in" structural changes to its target .java file; for example to add new methods (i.e. getter/setter methods) or an "implements ..." clause. The big advantages of such inter-type declaration (ITD) are:

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