Differences Between Spring vs Spring Boot
The Spring Framework is one of the most popular frameworks which helps application development in Java. It maintained a various way of object or beans relationship. It is actually very much useful for dependency injection (DI) or Inversion of Control (IOC), which wonderfully helped us to develop loosely coupled applications, which automatically helped proper unit testing of any Java application.
There have many other features including in the Spring Framework which is also be very popular in any constant. Those features can be divided into almost twenty modules which help to resolve many problems which are surprisingly very common in any java application. Some popular modules are explained below:
- Spring JDBC
- Spring MVC
- Spring AOP
- Spring ORM
- Spring JMS
- Spring Test
- Spring Expression Language (SPEL)
Spring JDBC is one of the very common features for spring application. Whenever we wanted to fetch data from any RDBMS database we can use spring default JDBC framework.
Spring MVC denotes model, view, and controller design pattern, mainly used for developing web application by using spring.
Aspect-Oriented Program (AOP) mainly used for any aspect like security or logging integration with any Java application, special features of it, and this feature can be called before or after a method call after a method return or exception arises in the application. Spring can be easily integrated with any ORM tool. Spring test for testing purpose and expression language are using for view presentation.
Spring boot is actually based on all the default features of spring. Core Spring and MVC can able to handle entire require features of any Java application. As per complexity and configuration, spring boot can help us lot to reduce spring configuration related complexity.
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Head to Head Comparison Between Spring vs Spring Boot
Below is the top 4 difference between Spring vs Spring Boot
Key Differences Between Spring vs Spring Boot
Both Spring vs Spring Boot are popular choices in the market; let us discuss some of the major Difference Between Spring and Spring Boot
- Spring is mainly concentrated on its core features and MVC features where a developer needs to configure manually and define which feature needs to be used by the application as per requirement. Whereas Spring Boot is automatically loaded all the features of spring core and MVC automatically. Developer no need to define any specific configuration manually.
- Spring core has multiple modules which can be used for different purpose and resolving some common utilities as per java application requirements. Modules like Spring JDBC, MVC, AOP, ORM etc are very much useful for any aspect as per project requirements. All those utilities can be properly configured and utilized as per system or project requirements. Whereas Spring Boot can utilize all those requirements easily just define the application as @SpringBootConfiguration, that annotation enough to manage for loading entire spring configuration or all the modules features based on the jar files or dependency mentioned for that specific spring boot project.
- Transaction management is one of most critical job in any Spring application, developer has to define proper transactional management key for every hibernate session or DB connection (in case of Spring JDBC), spring specific transactional class needs to be defined in application-specific configuration file for using those in entire application which can manage the transaction properly. Whereas Spring Boot automatically managed entire transactional data without mentioning any specific configuration manually, the entire thing can be handled automatically. A transaction can be defined in every session or connection opening and closing. A transaction can be commit or rollback based on the entire task of that specific session completion status.
- Integration with any ORM tool is very critical for any kind of spring application, needs to define their data source properly in the configuration file manually by the developer, there have changes need to be done for any ORM tool exchange. In case of spring boot again it can be easy to auto-configured, no need of manual intervention, only define one database property file is enough for entire set up.
- Spring core or Spring MVC structure developer can easily maintain on loading only require feature based on project requirement. Whereas the case of spring boot, all the features defined in dependency or jar files will be automatically loaded, a developer has no control of not deploying any specific feature based on project requirement.
Spring vs Spring Boot Comparison Table
The primary Comparison between Spring vs Spring Boot are discussed below:
| The basis of comparison Between Spring vs Spring Boot |
Spring |
Spring Boot |
| Configuration | To design any spring based application, a developer needs to be taken care on manual set up on Hibernate data source, Entity Manager, Session Factory, Transaction Management everything. | To Design all those common set up, a developer doesn’t need to define everything individually, SpringBootConfiguration annotation enough to manage everything at the time of deployment. |
| XML | Spring MVC application some of the XML definition mandatory to manage. | Configuring Spring Boot Application nothing needs to be managed, the only annotation managed everything. |
| Controlling | As configuration can be easily handled by manually, so Spring or Spring MVC can manage to not loading some of the unwanted default features for that specific application. | In case of Spring Boot, it automatically handled on default loading part, so the developer doesn’t have as such concept of not loading some of the specific unusable spring default features. |
| Use | Better to use if application type or characteristics are purely defined. | Better to use where application type of functionality for future use not properly defined. As integrating any Spring specific feature will be auto-configured in here, so no need any additional configuration. |
Conclusion – Spring vs Spring Boot
Spring vs Spring Boot both are a very much popular framework for Java/J2EE application at any time. Normally developer is going to choose which framework will be better to use based on the application requirement or functionality. Suppose application have some possibility of using verities Spring modules in any circumstances on future integration, in that case, Spring boot will be always a better option to use because just adding require dependency or jar file enough to use that specific module integration with your existing application. But if an application doesn’t have that kind of future prospect, or plan to only make a pure web application, in that case, Spring MVC will be a good approach, as a developer have a lot of control on the features enable or disable.
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This has a been a guide to the top difference between Spring and Spring Boot. Here we also discuss the Spring vs Spring Boot key differences with infographics, and comparison table. You may also have a look at the following Spring vs Spring Boot articles to learn more –
