Datasheet

Bearing in mind that Spring was originally invented to create an easier and more lightweight alterna-

tive to the legacy J2EE, it is easy to see why such a rich API exists for component-based enterprise appli-

cation development.

Throughout this book, the APIs and components depicted in Figure 1-5 are explored. You will have many

hands-on opportunities to work and experiment with the Spring APIs.

Summary

Spring started life as an implementation of a lightweight alternative to the heavyweight J2EE 1.4 con-

tainers. It enables the construction of completely component-based applications with just enough com-

ponents to carry out the work — and without the baggage of application servers.

The core of Spring provides flexible runtime wiring of Java Beans via an XML-based descriptor; appli-

cations can be created by wiring together JavaBeans components with Spring-supplied container-service

components that supply essential services such as relational database access and user interface handling.

Spring 2 API Modules Description

AOP

Supports AOP for application crosscutting concerns such as security,

transactions, and other behaviors. Includes proxy-based implementa-

tions via Spring AOP, and integration with the AspectJ AOP language.

DAO

Provides a generic Data Access Objects abstraction over access of

relational data from a variety of sources (such as JDBC). The access

approach is uniform, regardless of the source of the data.

ORM

Provides uniform access to a wide variety of Object to Relational

Mapping technologies including Hibernate, iBatis Maps, JDO, and JPA.

REMOTING

This API abstracts the ability to export interfaces for remote access

to the features of a Spring components–based application. Supported

access protocols include RMI, JMS, Hessian, Burlap, JAX RPC and

Spring HTTP invoker. Remote access via Web Services is also sup-

ported through Spring Remoting.

WEB and WEB MVC Components and APIs providing support for web applications,

including requests handling, file uploads, portlet implementation,

Struts and Webwork integration, and so on. Includes support for

Model View-Controller (MVC) design patterns during the construc-

tion of web applications. Enables integration with a large variety of

presentation technologies, including Velocity, JSP, JSF, and so on.

JEE

This API and its components support enterprise application creation,

including the creation of those that support services found in the

Java EE container — JMX, JMS, JDBC, JNDI, JTA, JPA, and so on.

Also includes an API that supports the creation of standard EJBs

using Spring components, and the ability to invoke EJBs from Spring

components.

Chapter 1: Jump Start Spring 2

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