What are Pointcuts?
As written in an other article, the key to AOP framework is providing a different way of thinking about application structure.
This structural thinking is captured in the form of pointcuts. Pointcuts are determining which joinpoints a piece of advice should apply to. It's more logical — although not fully accurate - to think of a pointcut as a set of joinpoints: for example, a set of methods that might be targeted by an advice.
Pointcuts are identifying where the advice should be applied to. The magic of AOP framework lies more into the specifications of where the action should be taken, than what action has to be applied ( what advice )
Spring Pointcut Concepts
Spring pointcuts are essential ways of identifying what method invocations will fit a certain criteria. Almost every time this means identifying methods, but sometimes it means identifying methods in a certain context.
A pointcut might select a set of method invocations such as:
All setter methods.
All methods in a particular package.
All methods returning void.
All method calls with one argument, where that argument is passed a 0 value.
As you can see, the possibilities are limitless. Spring provides a programmable pointcut model.