Chapter 1. Springing into action
This chapter covers
- Spring’s bean container
- Exploring Spring’s core modules
- The greater Spring ecosystem
- What’s new in Spring
It’s a good time to be a Java developer.
In its almost 20 year history, Java has seen some good times and some bad times. Despite a handful of rough spots, such as applets, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), Java Data Objects (JDO), and countless logging frameworks, Java has enjoyed a rich and diverse history as the platform on which much enterprise software has been built. And Spring has been a big part of that story.
In its early days, Spring was created as an alternative to heavier enterprise Java technologies, especially EJB. Spring offered a lighter and leaner programming model as compared to EJB. It empowered plain old Java objects (POJOs) with powers previously only available using EJB and other enterprise Java specifications.
Over time, EJB and the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) evolved. EJB started offering a simple POJO-oriented programming model of its own. Now EJB employs ideas such as dependency injection (DI) and aspect-oriented programming (AOP), arguably inspired by the success of Spring.