title: Spring pointcut for abstract class' protected method
body: <p>I am using <code>Spring 3.2</code> and <code>AspectJ 1.7.1</code>. (It is not likely that I can upgrade to later versions in the near future.)</p>
  
  <p>I need to define a pointcut for a protected method in an abstract class. AFAIK I need <code>AspectJ</code> for methods that are not public, so I have only tried this with the (<code>AspectJ</code>) annotations:</p>
  
  <pre><code>package com.aspects;
  @Aspect
  public class Aspect{
  
      @Before("execution(* com.x.y.x.MyClass.myMethod(..))")
      public void beforeAspect(){
         //do something here
      }
  
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>In my <code>beans.xml</code> I have:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;aop:aspectj-autoproxy /&gt;
  &lt;bean id="myAspect" class="com.aspects.Aspect"/&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have checked and my <code>Aspect</code> class is created (constructor is getting called), no exception is being thrown when the application is launched.
  However I can not get the <code>beforeAspect</code> to be called. For public methods in non abstract classes this works. How can I make it work for protected method in abstract class?</p>