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Spring

The Spring Framework (or Spring for short) is an open source application framework for the Java platform. The first version was written by Rod Johnson, who first released it with the publication of his book Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development (Wrox Press, October 2002). more...

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A port is available for the .NET Framework.

The framework was first released under the Apache 2.0 license in June 2003. The first milestone release, 1.0, was released in March 2004, with further milestone releases in September 2004 and March 2005.

Although the Spring Framework does not enforce any specific programming model, it has become popular in the Java community as an alternative, replacement, or even addition to the Enterprise JavaBean (J2EE) model. By design, the framework offers a lot of freedom to Java developers yet provides well documented and easy-to-use solutions for common practices in the industry.

While the core features of the Spring Framework are usable in any Java application, there are many extensions and improvements for building web-based applications on top of the Java Enterprise platform. Spring has gained a lot of popularity because of this, and is recognized by vendors as a strategically important framework.

Introduction to the Spring Framework

The Spring Framework provides solutions to many technical challenges faced by Java developers and organizations wanting to create applications based on the Java platform. Because of the sheer vastness of the functionality offered, it can be hard to distinguish the major building blocks from which the framework is composed. The Spring Framework is not exclusively linked to the Java Enterprise platform, although its far-reaching integration in this area is an important reason for its popularity.

The Spring Framework is probably best known for offering features required to create complex business applications effectively outside of the programming models which have been dominant historically in the industry. Next to that, it is also credited for introducing previously unfamiliar functionalities into today's mainstream development practices, even beyond the Java platform.

This amounts to a framework which offers a consistent model and makes it applicable to most application types created on top of the Java platform.

Modules of the Spring Framework

The Spring Framework can be considered as a collection of smaller frameworks. Most of these frameworks are designed to work independently of each other yet provide better functionalities when used together. These frameworks are divided along the building blocks of typical complex applications: