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Introduction to Spring Framework

What is Spring?​

  • The Spring Framework (shortly, Spring) is a mature, powerful and highly flexible framework focused on building web applications in Java.

  • Spring makes programming Java quicker, easier and safer for everybody. It's focus on speed, simplicity, and productivity has made it the world's most popular Java framework.

  • Whether you're building secure, reactive, cloud-based microservices for the web, or complex streaming data flows for the enterprise, Spring has the tools to help.

  • Born as an alternative to EJBs in the early 2000s, the spring framework quickly overtook its opponent with its simplicity, variety of features, and its third-party integrations.

  • It is so popular that its main competitor quit the race when Oracle stopped the evolution of the Java EE 8, and the community took over its maintanance via Jakarta EE.

  • The main reason for Spring Framework success is, it regularly introduces features/projects based on the latest market trends, needs of the Dev community. For ex: SpringBoot

  • Spring is open source. It has large and active community that provides continuous feedback based on a diverse range of real-world use cases.

Jakarta EE Vs Spring​

In Java we have 3 kind of flavors

  1. Standard Edition - which will have all the core java classes, interfaces like Object Class, Collections API, JDBC, Exception handling

  2. Java ME - Mobile Edition

  3. Java EE - Enterprise Edition

Java EE Release Timeline​

  • Java/Jakarta Enterprise Edition (EE) contains Servlets, JSPs, EJB, JMS, JSF, JAXB, JAX-WS, Web Sockets etc.

  • Components of Java/Jakarta Enterprise Edition (EE) like EJB, Servlets are complex in nature due to which everyone adapted Spring Framework for web application development.

  • Java EE quit the race against the Spring Framework, when Oracle stopped the evolution of Java EE 8, and the community took over its maintanance via Jakarta EE.

  • Since Oracle owns the trademark for the name "Java", Java EE renamed to Jakarta EE. All the packages are updated with javax.* to jakarta.* namespace change.

Spring Release Timeline​

  • The first version of Spring was written by Rod Johnson, who released the framework with the publication of his book Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development in October 2002.

  • Spring came into being in 2003 as a response to the complexity of the early J2EE specifications. While some consider Java EE and Spring to be in competition, Spring is, in fact, complementary to Java EE. The Spring programming model does not embrace the Java EE platform specification; rather, it integrates with carefully selected individual specifications from the EE umbrella.

  • Spring continues to innovate and to evolve. Beyond the Spring Framework, there are other projects, such as Spring Boot, Spring Security, Spring Data, Spring Cloud, Spring Bacth,among others