Advantages of Spring Framework With Limitations

1. Objective

In the previous tutorial, we studied Spring Framework Environment Setup. Now we are going to discuss Advantages of Spring Framework with Limitations. Every topic has its set of advantages and disadvantages. This allows you to know about Spring Framework with much better understanding as to why you should learn this Advantages & Disadvantages of Spring Framework.
So, let’s start Advantages of Spring Framework with limitations.

Advantages of Spring Framework With Limitations

2. Advantages and Disadvantages of Spring Framework

The Spring Framework when it was introduced got immense popularity and appreciation from developers all over the Java community. Several developers across the community use Spring Framework to develop high performance and reusable code.
Spring framework is one of the best lightweight frameworks. With Spring framework’s core features you can develop any kind of Java application. But not all of them can help you get the desired results or success. Therefore, you should know the advantages and disadvantages of Spring Framework.

a. Advantages of Spring Framework

The following are the advantages of Spring Framework and one should opt for it:

Advantages of Spring Framework

i. Use of POJO

Spring Framework helps the developers to develop enterprise application. It uses POJO’s which is an abbreviation for Plain Old Java Object. Using POJO for developing an application is that you don’t need an enterprise container like an application server. Also, it helps you get rid of conventional Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) by letting you can use a robust servlet container like Tomcat. This makes Spring Framework a lightweight framework.

ii. Flexibility for configuring Spring

Spring supports the use of both XML configuration as well as Java-based annotations for configuring the Spring Beans. Therefore, it provides the flexibility of using any of them for developing your enterprise application.

iii. No Need Server

As you know Spring framework provides a lightweight container. This can be activated without the use of the web server or application server.

iv. Use of Spring AOP

The Spring AOP module brings several benefits to the developer. It allows a developer to have different compilation unit or separate class loader. Along with that, it uses IoC for dependency injection which allows aspects to be configured normally.
Follow this link to know about Spring LoC Containers in detail.

v. No Need to Reinvent

One of the major benefits of Spring Framework for development of enterprise application is that you can leverage from Spring. Spring uses technologies such as JDK timers, ORM frameworks, Java EE etc. So that developers need not have to learn all those technologies or frameworks in order to develop applications.

vi. Use of Modularity

The Spring Framework provides modularity to the developers. It helps them to choose which packages or classes can be used or ignored. With tons of classes and packages, it comes as a boon to developers to identify and choose the packages or classes without any problems.

vii. Ease of Testability

One the feature of Spring Dependency injection helps in gearing up testability. It simplifies the injection of test data with the use of JavaBean POJO.

viii. The Consistency of Transaction Management

Spring Framework can easily scale up or down the local as well as global transactions using JTA. It is due to consistent transaction management interface.
Read More about Spring Transaction Management

ix. Well- Designed Web Framework

Spring has well designed MVC framework which provides a great alternative solution to a legacy web framework. You will learn about Spring MVC Framework integration later in the coming articles.

x. Inversion Control and API’s

Spring Framework provides inversion control and APIs to translate exceptions thrown by JDBC, Hibernate into unchecked and consistent ones.

b. Disadvantages of Spring Framework

Till now you have seen the advantages of Spring Framework for development of Enterprise application. But you should also know the limitations too before using them. The following are the disadvantages of using Spring Framework:

Disadvantages of Spring Framework

i. Complexity of Spring

The major criticism that this framework has seen is that it is too complex and it lacks clear focus as it has more than 2400 classes with 49 other tools which make it complicated for the developers to use it.

ii. High Learning Curve

If you are a new developer in this area it would be quite difficult to learn Spring Framework. This is due to new programming methods and the detailing each of them requires for developing the application.
Do you know How to Design Customised Events in Spring Framwork

iii. Tons of Parallel Mechanisms

This point is also mentioned in advantages section, but this can be disadvantageous to given that it can give developers lots of options and that causes confusion. It needs lots of understanding on the part of the developer to know which methods or classes can be useful on particular occasion.

iv. Lots of XML in Spring

If you ever worked with Spring framework you will get to know that developing Spring application requires lots of XML. So, if you are new to this world then better be prepared to work with lots of XML.

v. Lack of Guidelines

There are no clear guidelines on several topics for the developers in Spring documentation such as cross-site scripting attacks or cross-site request forgery attacks. Also, it has several security holes.
So, this was all about Advantages of Spring Framework with limitation. Hope you like our explanation.

3. Conclusion

Hence, in this session, you learned about the advantages of Spring Framework. Unlike other technology or frameworks, Spring too has its drawbacks or limitations. But with that, it also brings you the development and deployment of related benefits to developers using it. Ensure you take all the pros and cons of using Spring Framework before you go ahead with it. Furthermore, if you have any query, feel free to ask in the comment section.
Related Topic- Spring Boot CLI 
For reference