Spring vs Spring-Boot: What are the differences?

Introduction

When comparing Spring and Spring Boot, it's essential to understand the key differences between the two frameworks. While both are part of the Spring ecosystem, they serve unique purposes and have specific use cases.

1. Architectural Design: One key difference between Spring and Spring Boot lies in their architectural design. Spring is a comprehensive framework that provides various modules for different functionalities like JDBC, ORM, AOP, and more. On the other hand, Spring Boot is built on top of the Spring framework and aims to simplify the configuration process by providing auto-configuration and starter dependencies. This allows developers to create standalone, production-ready Spring applications with minimal setup and configuration.

2. Ease of Integration: Spring Boot simplifies the integration of third-party libraries and frameworks by offering starter dependencies, which pre-configure dependencies and set up boilerplate code. In contrast, Spring requires manual configuration for integrating external libraries, which can be time-consuming and error-prone. This makes Spring Boot a popular choice for rapid application development and prototyping.

3. Embedded Server Support: Another significant difference between Spring and Spring Boot is the support for embedded servers. Spring requires developers to configure and deploy applications in external servers like Tomcat or Jetty. In contrast, Spring Boot comes with embedded servers like Tomcat, Jetty, or Undertow, allowing developers to run applications as standalone JAR files without the need for external server setup.

4. Dependency Management: Spring Boot simplifies dependency management by providing a built-in dependency management system that resolves conflicts and ensures compatibility among dependencies. In contrast, Spring relies on tools like Maven or Gradle for dependency management, requiring developers to manually manage version conflicts and compatibility issues. This makes Spring Boot more convenient for handling dependencies in projects.

5. Annotation-based Configuration: Spring Boot heavily relies on annotations for configuration, reducing the need for XML-based configuration files. This makes the codebase cleaner and more readable, as developers can define configurations directly within the Java classes. Spring, on the other hand, supports both annotation-based and XML-based configuration, providing more flexibility but potentially leading to a more complex configuration setup.

6. Project Initializer: Spring Boot offers a web-based project initializer (Spring Initializr) that allows developers to quickly bootstrap a new Spring Boot project with the required dependencies and project structure. This reduces the setup time for new projects and ensures a consistent project layout. Spring, on the other hand, requires developers to set up the project structure manually, which can be more time-consuming and error-prone.

In Summary, Spring and Spring Boot differ in architectural design, ease of integration, support for embedded servers, dependency management, configuration style, and project initialization process, making them suitable for different development scenarios based on requirements.