Spring AOP slow startup time

From what you've posted it looks like your using Load Time Weaving which incurs a startup penalty because the system has to weave all the classes as they are being loaded. If your primary concern is startup time, then I would suggest you switch to Compile Time Weaving. You can find instructions on how to do this in the spring documentation (Chapter 6, Section 8) or in at the AspectJ site (http://www.eclipse.org/aspectj/docs.php)

Switching to Compile time weaving with the AspectJ compiler is relatively stragiht forward:

1. Remove the <aop:aspectj-autoproxy/> notation from your context file.
2. Add a aspectJ compile step to your build file. On the AspectJ site you should be able to find an ant plugin, codehaus has a maven plugin. Here are examples of how to us both.

For Maven:

<plugin>
     <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
     <artifactId>aspectj-maven-plugin</artifactId>
     <version>1.3</version>
     <configuration>
     <verbose>true</verbose>
      <source>1.6</source>
      <target>1.6</target>
      <complianceLevel>1.6</complianceLevel>
      <showWeaveInfo>true</showWeaveInfo>
      <aspectLibraries>
        <aspectLibrary>
                                <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
                                <artifactId>spring-aspects</artifactId>
                            </aspectLibrary>
                        </aspectLibraries>
                    </configuration>
                    <executions>
                        <execution>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>compile</goal>   
                            </goals>
                        </execution>
                    </executions>
                </plugin>

For Ant

 <taskdef
            resource="org/aspectj/tools/ant/taskdefs/aspectjTaskdefs.properties">
            <classpath>
                <pathelement location="${lib.dir}/AspectJ_1.6.8/aspectjtools.jar"/>
            </classpath>
        </taskdef>

  <iajc aspectPath="${file.reference.spring-aspects.jar}; ${build.classes.dir}/path/to/custom/aspects"
              classpath="${lib.dir}/AspectJ_1.6.8/aspectjrt.jar; ${javac.classpath}"
              inpath="${build.classes.dir}"
              destDir="${build.classes.dir}"
              showWeaveInfo="true" />

I had the same issue, it turns out Spring AOP auto-proxying spends a LOT of time at startup loading classes with bcel (without caching, so loading again and again same classes like java.lang.Object...) when trying to figure out which advices apply. It can be somewhat improved by writing more fine-grained Point cuts (use within, @within for example) but I've found a solution that worked better if all your pointcuts are written with @annotation.

1) Desactivate auto-proxy with: spring.aop.auto=false

2) Write a custom subclass of AnnotationAwareAspectJAutoProxyCreator to filter beans to be decorated according to your own criteria, for example this one is based on package and annotations :

@Override
protected Object[] getAdvicesAndAdvisorsForBean(Class<?> beanClass, String beanName,   TargetSource targetSource) {
  if (beanClass != null && isInPackages(beansPackages, beanClass.getName()) &&   hasAspectAnnotation(beanClass)) {
    return super.getAdvicesAndAdvisorsForBean(beanClass, beanName, targetSource);
  } else {
    return DO_NOT_PROXY;
  }
}

In my case startup time down from 60s to 15s.

I hope it will help someone and polar bears

Apparently this is a known issue if you have a lot of non-singleton beans. There seems to be a fix for Spring 3.1: https://jira.springsource.org/browse/SPR-7328