Despite all I've read, I still can't figure out what Spring Roo actually is, and that's after reading the first chapter of Spring Roo In Action, What is Spring Roo?! I understand the motivation for simplifying the process of developing a Spring application, but what does Spring Roo actually do?
Can someone summarize the contents of that first chapter, specifically how Spring Roo reduces the complexity of developing a Spring app? The authors will probably see this, so do a good job!
Spring Roo is RAD tool which can create and manage your spring based application. Its aim is to enhance Java developer productivity. It can't write business logic of your application but can handle configurational and infrastructural stuff.for more google spring roo :)
I think that chapter assumes some familiarity with the tools Roo is trying to automate. You probably might not appreciate the amount of "convention" being applied by Roo behind the scenes unless you have tried putting an app based on various Spring and other "enterprise" components together :)
Try following up the names of the various tools (especially Maven and AspectJ)
Funnily, the Ruby crowd seems to fawn over such "magic" happening behind the scenes, whereas some Java folks are like "Convention over configuration are for sissy's, arrrh, I like to build my apps one xml file at time" ;)
I liked Ben Alex's talk where he introduced the thoughts behind Roo. Check it out if you have some time.