Pointcut expression

The most typical pointcut expressions are used to match a number of methods by their signatures. A common method based pointcut expression is something like

PCD(<method scope> <return type> <fully qualified class name>.*(arguments))

1. PCD - PCD is pointcut designators. Spring AOP supports following pointcut expression -
   -- execution, with, this,target, args
   --Spring AOP also supports an addition PCD - "bean"
   --Of these, execution is most common
   
2. method scope: Advice will be applied to all the methods having this scope. For e.g., public, private, etc. Please note that Spring AOP only supports advising public methods.
   
3. return type: Advice will be applied to all the methods having this return type.
   
4. fully qualified class name: Advice will be applied to all the methods of this type. If the class and advice are in the same package then package name is not required
   
5. arguments: You can also filter the method names based on the types. Two dots(..) means any number and type of parameters.

Also these expressions can be chained to create composite pointcuts : && (and), || (or) , ! (not)

Some examples

the execution of any public method:
execution(public * *(..))

the execution of any method with a name beginning with “set”:
execution(* set*(..))

the execution of any method defined by the MyService interface
execution(* com.xyz.service.MyService.*(..))

the execution of any method defined in the service package:
execution(* com.xyz.service.*.*(..))

the execution of any method defined in the service package or a sub-package:
execution(* com.xyz.service..*.*(..))

any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) WITHIN the service package:
within(com.xyz.service.*)

any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) within the service package or a sub-package:
within(com.xyz.service..*)

any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) where the proxy implements the AccountService interface:
this(com.xyz.service.AccountService)

any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) where the target object implements the AccountService interface:
target(com.xyz.service.AccountService)

any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) which takes a single parameter, and where the argument passed at runtime is Serializable:
args(java.io.Serializable)