Spring AOP - Execution coverage - spring-aop

Question

To what classes (in which packages) and methods does this execution apply?
<aop:config>
<aop:pointcut id="serviceOperation" expression="execution(* com.my.application.service..*Manager.*(..))"/>
</aop:config>
I hade read about Spring AOP on http://spring.io/docs but can't understand the execution expression.

Answer 1

From the spring docs 10.2.3 section in link it is quite clear and execution is used to designate a pointcut.
execution(modifiers-pattern? ret-type-pattern declaring-type-pattern?name-pattern(param-pattern) throws-pattern?)
modifiers-pattern - Method visibility (public, protected, private, *)
ret-type-pattern - Return type of the method
declaring-type-pattern - Package or class (ex: com.app.service.* - applies to all classes in this package, com.app.service.UserService - applies only to UserService class, * - all)
name-pattern - method name (ex: set* - all setters)
param-pattern - method parameters (.. - any number of parameters, java.lang.String - method taking String as parameter.
throws-pattern - Method throwing this exception.
In your case
expression="execution(* com.my.application.service..*Manager.*(..))"/>
you are designating this pointcut to all methods whose classname ends with Manager in com.my.application.service package & its sub-packages.