Reference Documentation(Work in progress)Spring Framework3.0.0.M4RodJohnsonJuergenHoellerKeithDonaldColinSampaleanuRobHarropThomasRisbergAlefArendsenDarrenDavisonDmitriyKopylenkoMarkPollackThierryTemplierErwinVervaetPortiaTungBenHaleAdrianColyerJohnLewisCostinLeauMarkFisherSamBrannenRamnivasLaddadArjenPoutsmaChrisBeamsTareqAbed Rabbo2004-2009Rod Johnson, Juergen Hoeller, Keith Donald, Colin Sampaleanu, Rob Harrop, Alef Arendsen, Thomas Risberg, Darren Davison,
Dmitriy Kopylenko, Mark Pollack, Thierry Templier, Erwin Vervaet, Portia Tung, Ben Hale, Adrian Colyer, John Lewis,
Costin Leau, Mark Fisher, Sam Brannen, Ramnivas Laddad, Arjen Poutsma, Chris Beams, Tareq Abed Rabbo
Copies of this document may be made for your own use and for
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fee for such copies and further provided that each copy
contains this Copyright Notice, whether distributed in print
or electronically.Overview of Spring FrameworkThe Spring Framework is a lightweight solution and a potential
one-stop-shop for building your enterprise-ready applications. However,
Spring is modular, allowing you to use only those parts that you need,
without having to bring in the rest. You can use the IoC container, with
Struts on top, but you can also use only the Hibernate integration code or the JDBC abstraction layer. The Spring
Framework supports declarative transaction management, remote access to your
logic through RMI or web services, and various options for persisting your
data. It offers a full-featured MVC
framework, and enables you to integrate AOP transparently into your
software.Spring is designed to be non-intrusive, meaning that your domain logic
code generally has no dependencies on the framework itself. In your
integration layer (such as the data access layer), some dependencies on the
data access technology and the Spring libraries will exist. However, it
should be easy to isolate these dependencies from the rest of your code
base.This document is a reference guide to Spring Framework features. If
you have any requests, comments, or questions on this document, please post
them on the user mailing list or on the support forums at .What's New in Spring 3.0Core Technologies
This part of the reference documentation covers
all of those technologies that are absolutely integral
to the Spring Framework.
Foremost amongst these is the Spring Framework's
Inversion of Control (IoC) container. A thorough treatment
of the Spring Framework's IoC container is closely followed
by comprehensive coverage of Spring's Aspect-Oriented
Programming (AOP) technologies. The Spring Framework has
its own AOP framework, which is conceptually easy to understand,
and which successfully addresses the 80% sweet spot of AOP
requirements in Java enterprise programming.
Coverage of Spring's integration with AspectJ (currently
the richest - in terms of features - and certainly most
mature AOP implementation in the Java enterprise space)
is also provided.
Finally, the adoption of the test-driven-development (TDD)
approach to software development is certainly advocated by
the Spring team, and so coverage of Spring's support for
integration testing is covered (alongside best practices for
unit testing). The Spring team has found that the correct
use of IoC certainly does make both unit and integration
testing easier (in that the presence of setter methods and
appropriate constructors on classes makes them
easier to wire together on a test without having to set up
service locator registries and suchlike)... the chapter
dedicated solely to testing will hopefully convince you of
this as well.
Data Access
This part of the reference documentation is concerned
with data access and the interaction between the data access
layer and the business or service layer.
Spring's comprehensive transaction management support is
covered in some detail, followed by thorough coverage of
the various data access frameworks and
technologies that the Spring Framework integrates with.
The Web
This part of the reference documentation covers the
Spring Framework's support for the presentation tier
(and specifically web-based presentation tiers).
The Spring Framework's own web framework,
Spring Web MVC, is covered in
the first couple of chapters. A number of the remaining
chapters in this part of the reference documentation are
concerned with the Spring Framework's integration with
other web technologies, such as Struts
and JSF (to name but two).
This section concludes with coverage of Spring's MVC
portlet framework.
Integration
This part of the reference documentation covers
the Spring Framework's integration with a number of Java EE
(and related) technologies.
Appendices