Spring Vs. Spring Boot

Spring Vs Spring Boot: A Comparative Overview

Over the years the technology is growing very fast. The developers want to work on such technologies that are time-saving, easy to implement, provides project ready structure for the advanced projects. So here, the role of Spring Boot comes into the picture. And the question arises which one is better Spring vs Spring Boot.

As we have discussed in the earlier topics, the Spring Framework is the foundation of Spring Boot, so the main question arises: What is the difference between Spring And Spring Boot? In this topic of Spring Vs Spring Boot of Spring Boot series will discuss every parameter, which makes it differ from the Spring. Further, we will see which one is better.

If you ever worked on a Spring project, then you must know about the lengthy process of starting a new Spring project. To avoid this process and to get a project ready structure, the Spring Boot has been introduced.

Before diving into this topic, let’s have a quick look at both frameworks.

What is the Spring Framework?

The Spring Framework is a Java-based framework that provides comprehensive infrastructure support for developing enterprise applications. It comes with some extensive features such as Dependency injection. It provides the following modules for rapid application development:

• Spring JDBC
• Spring MVC
• Spring Security
• Spring AOP
• Spring ORM
• Spring Test

All of the above modules simplify the development and reduces the time and effort of the Developer.

Let’s take a scenario in the earlier Java frameworks to insert a record into a database; we needed to write a lot of boilerplate code. But, in the Spring Framework, the JDBC module allows us to insert a record into a database with only a few configurations.

Spring is one of the most used frameworks for developing enterprise Java applications. It provides an elaborate programming and configuration model and simplifies the complex development. Further, it is useful for any development platform. As most of the frameworks focus on a specific development area, it focuses on several areas of the application development and provides a range of features to fulfill them.

It is useful for developing loosely coupled applications.

What is the Spring Boot Framework?

Spring Boot is the foundation of the Spring framework, which comes with some extensive features for eliminating the boilerplate configurations required for setting up a Spring project. It provides an opinionated approach for rapid application development.

The Spring Framework primarily developed for providing flexibility, but Spring Boot focuses on shortening the code length and provides a most comfortable way for developing web applications. In Spring Boot, the annotation, configuration, and default codes are provided to shorten the development time. It assists in creating stand-alone applications with minimal configurations.

Autoconfiguration is one of the best features in Spring Boot. It automatically configures a class according to the requirement. Let us take a quick look at some of its extensive features of Spring Boot:

Below are some key features of the Spring Boot:

• Auto Configuration
• Opinionated
• Embedded server
• Metrics, Helth check, and externalized configuration
• Automatic config for Spring functionality
• Logging
• Security

For a complete overview of Spring Boot, Visit What Spring Boot is.

Before proceeding to head comparison of both the frameworks, let’s take a quick overview of both framework’s advantages:

Advantage of Using Spring Framework

The following are some significant advantages of using the Spring framework.

• It can be used for all layers of implementation in the development of an application.
• It is a very light-weight framework.
• Its POJO model is one of the best development model ever.
• It provides loose coupling and easy testability.
• It supports the declarative programming structure.
• It is capable of eliminating the formation of singleton and factory classes.
• It provides support for both XML and annotation configurations.
• It supports middleware services.

The Spring Boot provides a straight forward usage of the Spring Framework. It supports a loosely coupled application. However, It is complicated to several loosely coupled blocks and keeping track of them. Here, the Spring Boot Frameworks overcomes this problem.

Advantages of Using Spring Boot Framework

The following are some significant advantages of using the Spring Boot framework:

• Easy to develop Spring-Based projects with Java or Groovy.
• Saves time and increases productivity
• Ignores boilerplate code, Annotations, and XML Configuration
• Easy integration of Spring Boot Application with its Spring Ecosystem like Spring JDBC, Spring ORM, Spring Data, Spring Security, etc
• Provides “Opinionated Defaults Configuration” Approach to reduce Developer’s effort
• Supports Embedded HTTP servers like Tomcat, Jetty, etc., for developing and testing web applications.
• Supports CLI (Command Line Interface) tool for developing and testing Spring Boot Applications from the command prompt.
• Supports numerous plugins for developing and testing Spring Boot Applications easily using Maven and Gradle.
• Supports plugins to work with embedded and in-memory Databases.

let’s see some head to head comparison of Spring and Spring Boot:

Spring	Spring Boot
Spring Framework is used to develop Java enterprise applications using Java EE.	Spring Boot Framework is used to develop REST APIs.however; we can develop all types of Spring applications.
It targets to simplify Java EE development and develop productive applications.	It targets to reduce the line of codes and provides the easiest way to develop Web Applications.
The main feature of the Spring is dependency injection.	The main feature of Spring Boot is Autoconfiguration, which automatically configures the classes based on the requirement.
It develops loosely coupled applications to make things easier.	It develops stand-alone applications with less configuration.
In Springs, we need to write lots of code (boilerplate code) to do minimal tasks.	In Spring Boot, we don’t need to write boilerplate code.
In Spring, an explicit server is required to run the application.	Comparatively, Spring Boot provides embedded servers.
No in-memory database support.	It provides embedded and in-memory databases such as H2.
We can manually define dependencies for the Spring project in pom.xml.	Spring Boot starter in the pom.xml file internally takes care of downloading the dependencies JARs based on Spring Boot Requirement.

Minimum required dependencies:

Let’s see some configuration difference between Spring and Spring Boot:

Required dependencies for Spring:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
    <version>5.1.0.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
    <version>5.1.0.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>

Required dependencies for Spring Boot:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.5.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>

Conclusion

Spring and Spring Boot both are a very popular framework for developing Java enterprise applications. But the developers prefer the framework that saves their time and effort and better to use. So, the Spring Boot framework fulfil their requirements with extensibility. Nowadays, Spring Boot is a favourable choicee of developers.