Policy Injection

The term Policy Injection has been recently introduced by the Microsoft Patterns & Practices Team. For more information, see the blog of Ed Jeziersky and Tom Hollander . The term is used to designate what is fundamentally Aspect-Oriented Programming.

When asked why the term Policy Injection was chosen instead of AOP , Ed responded:

... the reality is most of our customers have not heard of AOP or AOSD. Please put yourself in their shoes for a second. We wanted a name that was reflective of the use and benefit the block brings, rather than using an unfamiliar term that only the exceptions understand. We also wanted to have no implicit expectations on the design that may be inherited from AO solutions.

Thus, Policy Injection is AOP, or at least a part of it. The reason why Microsoft did not choose the term AOP seems to be that AOP could have been perceived as a boring academic concept, which was fashionable in the .NET community around the year 2003.