Spring != XML

Think Spring means a mountain of XML? Your information is a little out of date. In fact, that was never quite true, even in the early days. Starting with version 2.5, whose first release candidate is out now, Spring supports annotations that let you configure the IoC container. Jürgen Höller and Rod Johnson have published two interesting articles on annotations and Spring's approach to configuration more broadly.

• Spring 2.5 RC1 is here — introducing new configuration approaches
• Spring Java Configuration Moving Ahead

If you think that Spring = XML it’s time to rethink. (It was never strictly accurate, in any case, as the Spring core container has always used its own Java metadata, and doesn’t know about XML or any other representation.)

This brings us to an important philosophical principle: our mission with Spring is to provide the best component model for enterprise Java, setting the standard for flexibility to meet complex requirements, and providing a comprehensive solution to real-world problems. We don’t believe that there is any one size fits all model for configuration, and we believe in accommodating choice, within our strong, extensible model.

You can read more about version 2.5 in Spring 2.5 and its new features, including annotations and the testing framework. I'll be giving a presentation on Spring 2.5 for our training program, with a particular focus on annotations. It might even turn into a longer blog post.