Category Archives: Spring Core

Spring Framework Vs. JEE – Part III

This is my final blog on this topic, hopefully. Part I of the blog can be found in here and Part II of this blog can be found in here.

I do at times think that my blog title itself is misleading or rather incorrect as I don’t feel that there needs to be a comparison between the two as both can exists together in one application without any issues at all. In fact if that’s the case we can use the best of both and be happy. But, there does exist this debate for a very long time and now a days Oracle also at times gives a comment to kill Spring Framework (buy and kill it to reduce competition, Oracle’s buying spree logic) and go with standards. Being the creators and maintainers of the Java language they do have the right to promote JEE but I feel they don’t have to have such a stance IMHO.

The community with full adoption of language has made it to a be a standard. Similarly when Spring Framework came in existence it was indeed helping Java developers use Java and avoid the complexities to develop enterprise application. In fact we have to give full credit to Spring Framework in keeping Java language alive and kicking. I have heard many times, even from my own managers that Java is too heavy and not that good for application development when you compare .NET. Spring to some extent have been bale to bring that easiness to it by taking the complexities away. At the moment also there might not be that much comparison between easiness with respect to .NET, but community is ready to develop applications using Java. Again for enterprise application comparing .NET and Java (JEE) is not that of a good idea because of so many reasons. Don’t want to divulge too much off the topic here.

As Kelly Tisdell mentions in his blog, JEE has definitely taken some page out of Spring Book and added onto its big Java bible and spreads a word across that “Java is standard, so migrate to JEE from Spring to be in standard”. It doesn’t say directly that stop using Spring but it has that tone in it.

Even after taking those pages, to develop an enterprise application from scratch using JEE does have its won complexities and Spring does have that easiness to it (might be subjective and debatable, but that what i feel). Most of nicer features in Spring has now crept into JEE under different names and much refined fashion (JEE have learned from mistakes and corrected it) for sure and that’s the reason developers have been prompted to think for this migration.

I wanted to put more facts in here rather than my opinions, but after so long I have indeed lost interest in filling in more details and i thought that i will just give my opinion and close this not so ending blog post.  Apologies for same.

In my opinion, Spring and JEE should marry each other and an enterprise application should be developed taking into good points from both. I am in no way saying that JEE or Spring scores over the other because both are really good platforms to develop your enterprise applications.

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Spring Framework Vs. JEE – Part II

As promised this is my second part of my blog. The first part of the blog can be accessed from here.

As part writing this blog i browsed through various blogs on the same topic. As i told in my first blog, this really is a holy war and over coming few months and years, this will rage even harder.

I bust out into laugh after reading one of the blogs, the link for which is as given below:-

http://broadleaf.tumblr.com/post/31333966305/broadleaf-continues-to-choose-spring-framework

The point that i burst outlaughing when the author stated as below:-

<quote>

…… Java EE 5 took a few pages out of Spring’s book and simplified the development of enterprise components with…….

</quote>

Yes, JEE sure did take some very crucial and important pages out of Spring book and because of which it is becoming superior day-by-day if not by huge margin. Spring with full support from its community is not far behind and with foundation in place, its building up components one after another. Its also adding in more and more support for open source libraries with ever growing sub-projects under the Spring Framework umbrella.

Also now its is slowly becoming a norm when considering a new open source for development to see how strongly it can be integrated into Spring and how seamless Spring configurations can be used. In my web service framework comparison, you wouldn’t believe, this was considered as one of the requirements and it will be a bonus for any open source to state that “they can be integrated into Spring” with some few lines of Java or XML configuration.

Spring has an edge by keeping it open for good open source libraries to plug on at any time and replace these libraries with a new one by mere configurations (at-least theoretically possible… :)). Java theoretically is “Write once run anywhere”, but is it truly that easy for a a production application to move from one environment to a new one… Hmmm… I don’t think so… 🙂

I am sort of exhausted already writing this blog. I will have to put you all in some suspense and put everything else that i plan to write in a new blog part. Hold on tight and i am sure i wouldn’t make you unhappy. Expect third part in another 3 days time. Its weekend here and i am really looking forward to it in a big way.

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Spring Framework Vs. JEE – Part I

Am I playing with fire here. Perhaps Yes.

As many say, this truly classify itself to be a holy war for predominance and will surely stir some dirty stuff out into the air.

One of my colleagues recently came to me and had a small debate as to why the our organization selected Spring over JEE. He was very much in favor of JEE especially JEE 6.

We sometime back (more than an year) had an exercise in which the task was to choose organization wide Java framework. As you guessed right, we did have Spring Framework and JEE as strong candidates. Our approach was really methodical and a methodology which was devised internal to the organization was used.

In this methodology the two candidates was put into test. First of all, various architecture quality attributes were put in such as Performance, Scalability, Testability etc. and then various requirements in these attributes were classified/grouped together. Once we have that, we get the various stakeholders involved and get their buy in and their stand on the overall acceptance of these quality attributes and rank it. We then went on with POC (Proof of Concept) and each requirement was rated against each of the chosen frameworks.

Finally after a grueling exercise of rating various requirement for each of the framework, a final rating comes out which give good indication as to which on quality attributes gets favored for each of the framework and according to the stakeholders, which one to choose out of these two. The choice was made and there was no surprise, it was Spring Framework.

For our company now the chosen default framework is Spring and anything else if it is taken, it goes as an exception.

For me when i say that i use Spring Framework, it doesn’t in any way mean that i don’t use JEE. They cannot be mutually exclusive, rather when combined together, it gives immense advantage to the project that you are developing. We do use Spring as our choice of framework but haven’t just taken out JEE in any sense out of the window, rather when the right time comes another evaluation as detailed above will be done to asses the situation even further. Till that time i feel choosing Spring as the default framework is a good one in all aspects.

In my next blog (Click here), I would try to give some of the major points, which made us choose Spring as a default framework of choice for developing any application within the organization.

Earlier i have done couple of comparisons as detailed below:-

Spring Integration Vs. Apache Camel

Web Service Framework Comparison – 2013 – Part I

Web Service Framework Comparison – 2013 – Part II

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Spring and Hibernate Example

The beauty of Spring is that it can integrates well with most of the prevailing popular technologies, and in the case of ORM, it integrates well with Hibernate.

I have written a Spring Book and in Chapter 8 i explain Spring’s Data Access capabilities in detail. There is separate topics written on ORM integration and this specific heading namely “Spring and Hibernate” is dedicated for explaining this beautiful integration between two open-source framework.

Please visit Page 9 in Chapter 8 of my Spring Book for more details on the same.

This section of the chapter examines the means by which Spring can be integrated with Hibernate. I assume that the reader is somewhat familiar with Hibernate and by reading this far familiar with Spring Framework as well to some extend.

ORM is a piece of software/product for the representation and conversion of data between the database and the object-oriented programming language. Hibernate is a powerful technology for persisting data and is a clear winner in the ORM race as of now. However it hasn’t become a standard. It takes much of the database related boiler-plate code from the developers, thereby asking the developers to concentrate on the core business logic of the application and not with the error-prone SQL syntax. It also enables application to access data from any database in a platform-independent manner.

One of the problems with using Hibernate is that the client Application that accesses the database using Hibernate Framework has to depend on the Hibernate APIs. These objects will continue to get scattered across the code throughout the Application. Above all, the application code has to manually maintain and manage these objects. Here comes Spring to the rescue with its IoC container capable of configuring these objects using Spring configurations.

 

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Spring Integration Vs. Apache Camel

The debate on which integration technology to use namely Spring Integration versus Apache Camel is one of the prominent topic now a days similar to mobile web application versus native mobile apps.

I don’t have any bias towards either Camel or Spring but for judgmental reasons I wanted to know which one to choose when given a chance in one of my projects. While doing so I did good amount of net surfing, and this blog post is an effort from my end to consolidate all the points that I could see in the internet. I have indeed plagiarized certain very good points from various blogs while doing so and some of the prominent blogs I have given as reference. Over the course of time I will be updating the blog post with more details as and when I find time.

Note: – I still haven’t been able to find an answer to my question and I am still using both co-jointly in my application. When using a connector I still don’t have a clear picture whether to use Spring connector or Camel connector.

Apache Camel – is a powerful open source integration framework based on known Enterprise Integration Patterns.

Spring Integration – It provides an extension to the Spring Framework to support the well-known Enterprise Integration Patterns while using the principles of Spring programming model.

Apache Camel as well as Spring Integration provides a lightweight alternative to ESB (Enterprise Service Bus), focusing on the programming model in such a way that the developer spends less time with infrastructural boilerplate.

 

 


Comparison from ohloh.net for the two projects:-

  • Camel has a total connector counts of >130 in all which does outscore Spring Integration by a great deal with Spring Integration catching up with every release. +1 Camel
  • Both are using Apache License version 2.0 which states, you can do whatever you want with the code. +1 Camel +1 Spring Integration.
  • Both projects have good activity with good amount of commits from good amount of committers. Camel does have an edge though over the number of commits with respect to Spring Integration. +1 Camel
  • Both started in the year 2007. The effort put for building Camel outscores Spring Integration by large. The lines of code with respect to Camel also outscore Spring Integration by a large distance. +1 Camel for the features it has with respect to lines of code. +1 Spring Integration as code lines cannot be said as a plus point (sometimes less code can be more effective and non-buggy).
  • Vibrant response community of Camel does outscore Spring Integration by a great deal. Might be because of Camel’s focused approach on integration as opposed to Spring’s all in one approach. What it means that most of the problems you face using Camel can be solved quickly by Googling as opposed to Spring Integration. Also the amount of stuff available in the case of Camel does outscore Spring Integration by a great deal as well. + Camel
  • JIRA activity is healthy in the case of Camel as opposed to Spring Integration. Again I see this because of the focused approach of Camel as well as attributed to the vibrant community along with good amount of code lines as compared to Spring Integration. Healthy JIRA activity does mean that turnaround time for a bug is quick in the case of Camel as compared to Spring Integration. +1 Camel
  • CamelOne conference for Camel and none for Spring Integration. Again this can be attributed to non-focus nature of Spring Framework as a whole as compared to Camel. +1 Camel
  • Both has good amount of tooling support in the form of STS and Fuse IDE. +1 Camel +1 Spring Integration
  • Both have commercial support and good amount of 3rd party consultants who are ready to help if you have more money to shell. +1 Camel +1 Spring Integration
  • Camel supports other DSL’s (Domain Specification Language) to a greater extend as compared with Spring Integration (ease of use and learn). +1 Camel

There is a very good presentation from Kai Wähner (Twitter: @KaiWaehner), which he presented in CamelOne Conference 2012, which does cover good amount of points and below is the slideshare details which he has shared. A well-documented comparison between various integration options available today on the Java (JVM) Platform. The author has played it safe similar to me by not giving a final verdict, but it will definitely help you to take into considerations and according to your application requirement take a right choice.

Some conclusions which can help the final decision:-

  • If you already have a Spring application which requires an integration layer, definitely Spring Integration is a good choice to make. If you have a non-spring application, using/introducing Camel as the integration layer would be really the way to go.

I don’t want to take any credit away from authors who has taken pain in doing this research. That’s the reason I would like to put the reference as the first section in my blog. I have gone through various blogs, tutorials and then compiled a blog in a focused and easy to understand manner.

References

http://www.ofbizian.com/2012/12/spring-integration-22-is-out-it-is-time.html

One of the post from Mark Fisher will surely give an insight into the reason behind developing Spring Integration – http://www.coderanch.com/t/568364/Spring/Camel-Spring-Integration-Part

http://www.kai-waehner.de/blog/2012/01/10/spoilt-for-choice-which-integration-framework-to-use-spring-integration-mule-esb-or-apache-camel/

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Spring – Application Monitoring – Performance Monitor

Thanks to my colleague for sharing this info on application monitoring using out of the box spring interceptors.

To put in place performance monitoring of service methods (methods annotated with @Service), do the following.

The interceptor class which will be used for this is org.springframework.aop.interceptor.PerformanceMonitorInterceptor.

In your spring application context configure the interceptor as below:-

The logger has to be set at trace level for the logging to happen

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Spring – Multiple transaction manager in an application

In the application context declare the following:-

In the Java code do the following as shown below as code snippet:-

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