What Is Spring?

Determining precisely what spring is might be one of the more difficult aspects of its explanation. Although Spring is commonly referred to as a lightweight framework for developing Java applications, this description misses two important details.

First, unlike many other frameworks (like Apache Struts, which is restricted to online applications), Spring allows you to construct any Java program, including stand-alone, web, and JEE apps.

Second, the term "lightweight" in this definition refers more to the Spring philosophy's overall concept of a little impact than it does to the number of classes or distribution size. In order to profit from Spring Core, you need to make little, if any, changes to your application code. If you ever decide to stop using Spring, it will be easy. This makes Spring lightweight.

As you can see, we qualified the last statement to only apply to Spring Core. This is because many of the additional Spring components, such as data access, need a much closer relationship with the Spring Framework. The advantages of this linkage are evident, though, and we provide methods for reducing the impact on your application throughout the book.

Happy Exploring!