Spring vs. Spring Boot vs. the Spring Framework
The key differences between Spring vs. Spring Boot vs. the Spring Framework is that the Framework is a piece of Java technology that simplifies software development; Spring Boot is an autoconfiguration tool that assembled multiple Spring projects together; and Spring is the brand name that refers to the ecosystem tools, technologies and contributors.
What is the Spring Framework?
The Spring Framework originated in 2004 as an alternative to cumbersome and confusing software development frameworks, notably J2EE, that dominated the Java landscape at the turn of the century.
The Spring Framework, through the use of its dependency injection and inversion of control container, made enterprise Java development less academic and more user-friendly. The Java community quickly adopted the Spring Framework and built a variety of subprojects around it.
Popular Spring projects
Currently there are dozens of Spring managed projects, including the following:
- Spring Web MVC for RESTful web development.
- Spring Boot Actuator to gather runtime metrics.
- Spring JPA to simplify the integration of ORM tools like Hibernate.
- Spring Batch to help with ETL and record processing.
- Spring AI to help with ChatGPT integration and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) development.
What is Spring Boot?
Spring Boot was created to help developers create a preconfigured Spring project that includes any number of Spring projects. In other words, Spring Boot helps teams bootstrap an application.
Spring Boot and Spring Initializr
Through the use of tools including the Spring Initializr or the Spring Tool Suite, developers can create a working, skeleton of a project simply by choosing options such as these:
- Which language to use, such as Java or Kotlin.
- Which build tool to use, be it Maven or Gradle.
- Which version of the Spring Framework and Spring Boot to use.
- Which Spring dependencies to add.
Simply click checkboxes and select required dependencies from a list, and Spring creates a starter project with a sensible set of defaults and initial settings. With that, developers can quickly build software instead of wasting time fighting configuration issues.
What is Spring?
So, the Spring Framework is a simple technology that spawned many subprojects, and Spring Boot is an autoconfiguration tool that accelerates Spring-based application development. So then, what is Spring?
Spring is simply the name Rod Johnson gave to the famous framework he built. It has become an umbrella term that encompasses all the official Spring projects, the community that builds those products, and the people who actively contribute to those projects. The company that owns the Spring trademark has changed hands many times over the years, from SpringSource to Pivotal to VMware and currently Broadcom. But regardless of who the stewards of the technology are, the Spring brand name has never changed.
Cameron McKenzie has been a Java EE software engineer for 20 years. His current specialties include Agile development; DevOps; Spring; and container-based technologies such as Docker, Swarm and Kubernetes.