attribute filter RuleReference ?

[Rod Widdowson]

>> Parsing RuleReference seems gnarly to me, for not enough gain, but my
>> mind is still melted.
> 
> They're the same objects internally, it just means having a map to store them in and then look them up so they can be referenced by the surrounding object.
> 

You don't even need to do that.  Spring does all the work for you,  you just call the method (name escapes me) to plant a reference to the bean rather than the bean.  

All that you then need to do is make sure that the name is normalised and there is a bunch of code to do that.  Just tool at the attribute rule parser and it shows you what to do...