Spring Tutorial
In this section we will read about the Spring framework.
This section will describe about the various aspects of Spring framework such as What is Spring, features of Spring, benefits of Spring, architecture of Spring framework, Spring integration with other frameworks, versions of Spring, Download Spring.
Spring is an application framework for developing Java Enterprise applications. Developers in a mass level choose Spring framework for developing enterprise applications. Springsource, developer of Spring framework, provides Spring as open source and released under version 2.0 of the Apache License. "Rod Johnson" an Australian computer specialist and the co-founder of SpringSource has created the Spring framework.
Spring has various of features that attracts the developer to develop application using Spring framework. Some of these features are as follows :
- Spring framework allows you to do focus only on your business problem not on the code for connecting components and systems.
- Provides simplicity and flexibility in developing web application using Spring MVC.
- Data accessibility
- Integration
- Security
Benefits of Spring
Benefits of using Spring are as follows :
- Modularity : Spring allows to modularize the application.
- Productivity : One of the main benefit of use of Spring is that it increases the productivity.
- Portability : Application developed using Spring framework is cross-platform i.e. application developed using Spring can be run on any operating system.
- Testability : Application written in Spring framework is can be tested easily.
Architecture of Spring Framework
Spring is designed in a way that you can select your suitable module for developing your application. There are about 20 modules which can be used as per your application development requirement. These modules are Core Container (group of Beans, Core, Context, Expression Language), Data Access/Integration (group of JDBC, ORM, OXM, JMS, Transactions), Web (group of Web, Servlet, Portlet, Struts), AOP, Aspects, Instrumentation and Test.
Spring Integration with other frameworks
Spring can be integrated with other Java frameworks and ORM.
- Integration of Spring with Struts
- Integration of Spring with JSF
- Integration of Spring with Hibernate
Versions of Spring
SpringSource time to time releases Spring's new versions. The new one version may or may not contain the new and old classes, interfaces and many more. At the time of writing this tutorial latest version of Spring is 3.2. Prior to this version some major versions of Spring are as follows :
- 3.1.3
- 3.1.2
- 3.1.1
- 3.1.0
- 3.0.6
- 3.0.5
- 3.0.4
- 3.0.3
- 3.0.2
- 3.0.1
- 3.0.0
- 2.5.0
- 2.0.0
- 1.0.0 M1 (The first milestone release)
You may download the Spring from the official website of SpringSource i.e. http://www.springsource.org/download/community