Plugin Style architecture vs Mavenised Component Style

Question

Which is a better approach to build Java Spring Web Application

1) Plugin Style architecture Ex : Blojsom

2) Component based architecture something like developing features as maven dependents

Also can anyone suggest a good plugin style application for reference

Answer 1

Designing plugin style application is not trivial, especially web applications. Have a look at Hudson continuous integration engine, it's a web application that has plugin support.

Good luck

Answer 2

Use a plugin style architecture if you want people to be able to extend the behavior of your application (e.g hudson, confluence, xwiki, eclipse, etc). This is also good way to ease contributions. But it is not that simple as mentioned in another answer.