One of the key components of Spring is the Aspect oriented programming (AOP) framework. The functions that span multiple points of an application are called cross-cutting concerns and these cross-cutting concerns are conceptually separate from the application's business logic. There are various common good examples of aspects including logging, declarative transactions, security, and caching etc.
The key unit of modularity in OOP is the class, whereas in AOP the unit of modularity is the aspect. Whereas DI helps you decouple your application objects from each other, AOP helps you decouple cross-cutting concerns from the objects that they affect.
The AOP module of Spring Framework provides aspect-oriented programming implementation allowing you to define method-interceptors and pointcuts to cleanly decouple code that implements functionality that should be separated. I will discuss more about Spring AOP concepts in a separate chapter.