EJB vs Spring

Difference between EJB vs Spring

The following article, provides EJB vs Spring differences. Let’s see first what EJB and Spring are.

EJB:

EJB is an acronym for Enterprise Java Beans. EJB is a Java API for server-side architecture for transactional, component-based distributed programming. EJB not only specifies the bean format but also defines a set of services that must be provided by the container on which the bean runs. Thus a developer need not to concern with the service details such as security, transaction support or any remote object access. To run an EJB application you need an application server i.e. EJB container such as JBoss, WebLogic, WebSphere, etc.

Spring:

Java Spring is a lightweight open source framework which provides support to a various framework such as Hibernate, EJB, JSF, Tapestry, etc. Spring framework has a layered structure and it allows you to choose the required component at the start of the development. Spring framework offers many features such as Inversion of Control (IOC), Aspect Oriented (AOP), Transaction Management, JDBC Exception Handling, etc that allows the developer to concentrate on the business requirement rather than the architectural details of the application.

Head to Head Comparison between EJB vs Spring

Below are the top 10 differences between EJB vs Spring.

Key Differences between EJB vs Spring.

Let us discuss some of the major differences between EJB vs Spring.

• The main difference between EJB vs Spring is that EJB is a specification of Java EE whereas Spring is a framework or an implementation.
• EJB is an architecture for transactional, component-based programming. It makes the server side development much easier for the Java developer. Spring framework is a Java platform that provides support for developing the Java application. The framework handles the infrastructure configuration and lets the developer focus on business requirements.

EJB Architecture

• The EJB framework separates the business logic from the low-level details so that the developer can concentrate on the business requirement. Unlike legacy systems that use a large number of SQL queries, EJB architecture does not use the SQL queries directly, instead, it uses a model-view-controller design pattern where queries are wrapped inside the EJB container so that data can be assessed through EJB’s.
• At the center of the application there lies an EJB container that manages a set of enterprise beans. This bean is responsible to manage the connection with the backend database systems, typically a relational database. As you know in the Spring framework this is taken care of by the Data Access or the Integration module.
• In EJB, the web container uses JSP to access the EJB beans, it transforms the JSP to HTML and then serves the HTML to the browser. In Spring this is being handled by the Web module.
• In EJB, the middle tier i.e. the enterprise beans act as a wrapper over various systems such as the relational database. There are two types of enterprise beans i.e. entity and session beans. On a high level, session beans represent activity and entity bean represents entities of the application. An entity bean is a persistent object stored in a storage system such as the database. On the contrary Spring, the framework uses a web container for session management.

Spring Architecture

• Spring framework has about 20 modules and offers various features. These modules are logically grouped into Data Access/ Integration, Web, AOP, Aspects, Instrumentation, Core container, and test.
• The core container consists of the core, beans, context, and the Expression language modules. The core and Bean modules provide features such as IoC and Dependency Injection.
• The Data Access/ Integration layer provides transaction modules like JDBC, JMS, ORM, OXM, etc. The JDBC module provides a JDBC abstraction layer that removes the need to code the configuration code required to establish the connection with a database.
• The ORM module supports some popular object-relational mapping API like JPA, Hibernate. Unlike EJB which only supports JPA.
• The web layer consists of Web-Struts, Web-Servlet and Web-Portlet modules. The web-servlet module contains Spring’s MVC implementation for web applications. It provides a clean separation between the web forms and the business logic layer.
• Spring AOP modules provide an AOP Alliance-compliant aspect-oriented programming that lets you define method interceptors to cleanly decouple functionality.
• The test module provides support of JUnit or TestNG.

EJB vs Spring Comparison Table

Let us discuss the topmost differences between EJB vs Spring.

Conclusion

Every technology has some advantages and disadvantages and before choosing any specification or framework it is very important to understand the pros and cons upfront. In this article, we have seen that EJB is a specification of J2EE whereas Spring is a framework for easy implementation, even though there are some areas that do overlap.We have seen the differences in the architecture and discussed some of the features that EJB and spring offer to the developer.

With the difference matrix, we can conclude this is if you want to use advanced features like AOP and want more control over the application then go with the Spring framework. If you do not want to go deep in the configuration details of the database and the application is very stateful then go with EJB.

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This has been a guide to EJB vs Spring. Here we also discuss the EJB vs Spring key differences with infographics and comparison table. You can also go through our other suggested articles to learn more –

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