I spoke at JBossWorld last month. I gave my personal favorite Java EE 6/Spring framework comparison/contrast talk. The crowd at JBossWorld was fantastic and I got to talk to some EJB 3 in Action readers. I really love this talk because it gives me a chance to cover in-depth what I see in the two mainstream Java server-side stacks that I care about. In particular, I had a more philosophical bend on this talk that goes to the heart of each stack as opposed just a superficial talk about mechanical features. I hope to give this talk again soon and really liked how it panned out this time, despite the chronic SpringSource objections to this talk and complaints that it’s somehow “unfair” to them.
Such is how some people think I guess and that’s a real shame. Not everything in life is about cynical pursuits, selling something or making money (in fact I can only imagine how hollow and meaningless that might feel). It is sometimes possible to set ones selfish interests aside and analyze for the sake of pure inquiry to try to find the truth about something one cares about. I think that is when we are all at our very best as scientists, engineers, craftsmen and artists…that’s our craft at its very best, not at its cynical worst.
At any rate, besides the conference it was great to hang out with the usual suspects at JBoss – Dan Allen, Emmanuel Bernard, Bill Burke, Jay Balunas, etc. It was also great to finally meet Pete Muir, the head honcho for Contexts and Dependency Injection for Java EE (JSR 299) reference implementation from JBoss. I thought he was a first-class engineer and a true gentleman.
1. One fundamental assumption around the benefit of using Spring is the notion that an EJB container, which requires an application server (and JNDI for lookup's) is heavyweight. The mere absence of it, is therefore lightweight.2. Any non-EJB 3, non-Spring solution requires a lot of boiler plate code, and often results in non-loose coupling, and therefore is bloated. An absence of it is less bloated, well written code. 3. A framework may use a lot of XML, but if that was Spring then no problem. Why? Because it's lightweight (no container), eliminates bloat ware.I ask: Spring eliminates bloat ware for sure, but it complicates matters in other ways.The usual Ans: Yes, but what other better way is there to manage it? Don't bring EJB 3 because we already discussed (see #1). It's heavy weight as it requires a container.The argument is usually circular, and you can never come out of it.
Shaw,This is a great observation. The assumption I challenge of course, if whether EJB 3.1 Lite can be stuck with the now seriously outdated \”heavyweight\” label any more. The Java EE 6 Web Profile is certainly more lightweight than J2EE, as are implementations like Resin that have a long history of supporting lightweight, agile development.Hope it helps,Reza