Spring was not developed in a boardroom and as a result it has a vibrant and sometimes confusing context. This book will first introduce you to the core concepts behind Spring and how Spring will make your life easier (and more interesting!). Spring is built around a few key patterns and some relatively new concepts in Java programming. In this book after the introduction, each article will be based on a working example available from the Spring by Example Subversion repository.

While Spring evolved out of the J2EE realm, in keeping with the idea that Java components should not be tied to a particular architecture, we only require that you have some knowledge of Java and XML in order to understand and make use of most of this book. Although more advanced examples may require some additional knowledge to understand the example fully, but there are references at the end of each example to read more about the subject covered.