Spring Framework Overview

In this article, we’ll see Spring Framework Overview.

What is Spring Framework?

The Spring is an application framework & IOC (Inversion of Control) container used for building any Java project. It’s a lightweight framework, which can be easily integrated with other frameworks like Hibernate, Struts, etc. You can form simple, flexible, and fast applications and systems with the Spring framework.

Spring framework is an open-source Java platform that was initially written by Rod Johnson and was first released under the Apache 2.0 license in June 2003.

The heart of Spring is Dependency Injection, Inversion of Control, and Aspect Oriented Programming. The appeal of Spring is the suite of Spring Projects which can be used for building enterprise applications. Spring MVC for websites, Spring Security for securing access, Spring Data for persistence operations, Spring Integration for EIP, Spring Batch for batch processing, etc.

The developers mainly use Spring for creating high-performing and vigorous applications. Companies that utilize Spring are Deleokorea, Intuit, Zalando, MIT, and Zillow, to name a few.

Spring focuses on the “plumbing” of enterprise applications so that teams can focus on application-level business logic, without unnecessary ties to specific deployment environments.

Why use Spring Framework

  • Spring is non-invasive: That means you do not need to implement any interface or inherit any class from spring to your classes, so whenever you want to change from spring to any other technology then you do not need to change the logic of your class.
  • Spring is lightweight: Spring is a vast framework so spring people divide the whole spring into different modules, they are designed in such a way that no module is dependent on another module, except the Spring core module, so according to your requirement you can learn a particular module, you no need to learn the whole total framework.
  • End-to-end Development: Spring supports all aspects of application development, Business aspects, persistence aspects, etc, so we can develop a complete application using spring.
  • Spring supports All types of application development: We can develop any application using spring, eg: Core java, web Applications, Distributed applications, and Enterprise applications.
  • Spring is versatile: We can integrate any technology with spring, so we can say Spring is versatile,
  • Spring supports dependency injection: The dependency between classes is managed by spring.

Installation

You should have pre-installed JDK11+ and  Eclipse IDE. Follow the steps in the https://github.com/spring-projects/sts4/wiki/Installation article.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Spring Framework

Advantages:

  • Spring allows developers to use POJOs to create enterprise apps (Plain Old Java Object). The advantage of utilizing POJO to develop apps is that we don’t require an enterprise container like an application server. However, we have the option of employing a dependable servlet container.
  • Spring improves the development process by providing an abstraction layer over current technologies such as servlets, JSP, JDBC, JNDI, RMI, and JThreats such as Cross bite scripting and XSS are very common in applications. Now the problem lies within the documentation part of Spring. It does not provide sufficient guidelines to deal with these threats. MS, and Java mail.
  • Spring includes existing technologies such as the ORM framework, logging framework, J2EE and JDK timers, etc. As a result, we don’t need to incorporate such technologies directly.
  • Spring WEB framework offers a well-designed web MVC framework that is an excellent replacement for outdated web frameworks.
  • Spring can do away with the need to create singletons and factories.

Disadvantages:

  • Spring is not user-friendly when it comes to new developers. This is because Spring is incorporated with an entirely new programming approach. If you are new to this framework, you might have a hard time learning this. Your company needs to opt for other frameworks if the project involves lots of development experience.
  • Threats such as Cross bite scripting and XSS are very common in applications. Now the problem lies within the documentation part of Spring. It does not provide sufficient guidelines to deal with these threats.
  • Spring framework consists of a large number of variables. Such a vast amount of tools and classes makes it more complicated.
  • Developers must understand that working with Spring requires an enormous amount of XML. Due to this large amount, they must be ready to allocate separate time for coding.

Reference:

 

Hope this article helps!

Last updated on May 18th, 2023.