Spring Framework

lukin

I've been looking into the idea of doing my Final Year Project in college on the subject of the Spring Framework.
All I know is that it was developed by a group callling itself Interface 21 and a guy called Rod Johnson is one of it's member's .
I went to a seminar he gave a couple of years ago and most of it seemed over my head.
I was able to pick up that it simplifies JDBC as regards error handling, and reduces the amount of code you need to write (eg you don't need to use a 'finally' block).
The project has to be 70% research and 30% implementation. I think there would be a no problem finding enough stuff about this subject for the research part, I am just wondering what to do as regards the implementation side of things. I was thinking that it might be possible to compare and contrast it with the existing Java API and draw conclusions based on that?

Apart from the obvious goal of getting a good mark,I'd like to learn a bit about it for my own experience.
I must stress that I don't want anyone to give me an idea for my FYP, I just want to know if you think it is a good/bad idea (I know the admins are very strict on that).
I did a search on here under "Spring Framework" but it came back with very little.
Thanks for any replies.

ressem

The spring framework isn't just about simplifying JDBC. Usually it's used as an alternative to some of the heavyweight J2EE patterns, which are seen as too complicated.
It's ported to .Net also.

It could be described as a set of layers that make it easier to put your application together from the various components.

Using it with JDBC is just an example. You can have a configuration file which allows you to switch frameworks (hibernate/ibatis) and database drivers by changing the value in the config file, and adding the database's driver jar.

Thre are similar layers to make Web ModelViewController architectures, ProxyFactories to introduce some AOP attributes to your code, to allow you to implement, for example logging and security, without writing this code into the middle of the class doing the work, testing stuff.

You've browsed through the manual at..
http://static.springframework.org/spring/docs/2.0.x/spring-reference.pdf

Robin1982

Good advice from ressem.

The reason why you came back with very little about Spring is that its actually quite hard to encapsulate it in a short sentence. For enterprise (read big, complex) applications the Spring framework can handle quite a lot, be it transaction management, Web Services, DB persistance management, mails etc. But as its modular, you can use parts of it without using the whole thing i.e. the Spring Web MVC framework.

Spring also allows you to use Plain Old Java Objects (POJOs) in enterprise applications, rather than things like Entity Beans (urgh) - this means you can use servlet containers rather than appilication servers if you don't need all the bells and whistles that come with App Servers.

I like Spring and I especially like its MVC framework (superior to Struts IMHO) - plus its well supported with things like taglibs.

If you are interested in developing with Spring (esp. MVC), I would strongly recommend "Agile Java Development with Spring, Hibernate and Eclipse" by Anil Hemrajani. This is a book for developers writter by a developer, so none of the confusing tangents on theories etc - he just cuts to the chase.

Plus read springframework.org.

lukin

Thanks to both of you. I think I might be better off just concentrating on one part of the framework, the whole thing is fairly big as you say.

ressem

I'd tend towards a topic like inversion of control and dependency injection and how spring implements it.

Alternatively the Spring AOP implementation would be substantial enough to fill a research project. Compare Spring AOP to AspectJ used with Spring perhaps?

lukin

ressem wrote:

I'd tend towards a topic like inversion of control and dependency injection and how spring implements it.

Yeah or "Transaction Management with Spring" I was thinking.