Re: Advantages and Disadvantages of using the Spring framework

From:

"Daniel Pitts" <googlegroupie@coloraura.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

30 Dec 2006 17:02:22 -0800

Message-ID:

<1167526942.829996.16070@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>

josh.s17@gmail.com wrote:

Hi,

I just wanted explore whether my experiences with using the spring
framework are a common
experience.

I can see same great advantages with using Spring however I
have this nagging feeling that it isn't the magic solution that some
people seem to make it out to be.

My gut feeling is the Spring framework is something that only
"experienced" java developers would appreciate and choose to use as it
solves problems that that large commercial developers comes across
often eg jdbc error handling is quite ugly but Spring JDBC templates
solves this problem.

However the downside of Spring is trying to learn it. Learning J2SE.
then J2EE (even just the web component parts) and also some widely
used java frameworks takes a long time. Mastering or even being a
novice at the Spring framework take a fair amount of time in addition
to this.

I'm also concerned that the extra configuration involved in using
Spring can reduce the understandability of the code for a newcomer
especially if they are not a Spring expert themselves.

Any thoughts?

Josh

Its been my experience with Spring that, while it does have a little
extra learning curve, once you become comfortible with IoC and
dependency injection, its hard to go back. As for the plugins to the
framework, I would treat them on a case by case basis. I've had good
luck using Spring Web Flow, Spring framework, Hibernate (with the
spring wrappers), etc...

As someone else in this thread said, many "new" things get the label of
cure-all. Just like at the hype of Ajax.

Hope this helps.
Daniel.