Spring 3.0 vs J2EE 6.0

Question

Hi everybody,

I'm confronted with a situation...

I've been asked to give an advise regarding which approach to take, in terms of J2EE development between Spring 3.0 and J2EE 6.0. I was, and still am, a promoter of Spring 2.5 over classic J2EE 5 development, specially with JBoss, I even migrated old apps to Spring and influenced the re-definition of the development policy here to include Spring specific APIs, and helped the development of a strategic plan to foster more lightweight solutions like Spring + Tomcat, instead of the heavier ones of JBoss, right now, we're using JBoss merely as a Web container, having what i call the "container inside the container paradox", that is, having Spring apps, with most of its APIs, running inside JBoss, So we're in the process of migrating to tomcat.

However, with the coming of J2EE 6.0 many features, that made Spring attractive at that time, easy deployment, less-coupling, even some sort of D.I, etc, seems to have been mimicked, in one way or the other. JSF 2.0, JPA 2.0, WebBeans, WebProfiles, etc.

So, the question goes...

From your point of view, how save, and logical, it is to continue to invest in a non-standard J2EE development framework like Spring given the new perspectives offered by J2EE 6.0?

Can we talk about maybe 3 or 4 more years of Spring development, or do you recommend early adoption of J2EE 6.0 APIs and it's practices?

I'll appreciate any insights with this...

Answer 1

If you're already a Spring shop, why bother switching? You're happy with it, it does what you want, it's actively developed, you're probably not looking to run outside of Tomcat any time soon, if ever, since Tomcat is very mature, and runs everywhere. So, any promise of portability that JEE might suggest is right out the window.

I see no reason to switch away from Spring.

Answer 2

The crucial point IMHO is not the one of features. In that regard, Spring will always be ahead of JavaEE as it's natural for OpenSource VS. a Standard. So one fact is, that you get the new features much earlier with Spring that with JavaEE (e.g. container integration testing is a new feature in JavaEE 6 and has been available in Spring for ages).

The most important point IMHO is the one of lifecycles for administration and development. When you choose JavaEE, you tie your programming model to your infrastructure. Usually app server vendors are not the fastest adopting new standard's versions (blame WebSphere, JBoss, what have you). So this means we probably won't see production ready, JavaEE 6 supporting products by the big vendors before end of the year.

Even if that is the case then you still have to take the hurdle of your administration, IT department and budget controlling managers to be willing to upgrade to this shiny new version. Coming from this side, JavaEE 6 is not even an option to many shops. You can choose what ever you like to deploy your apps to? You wanna choose Glassfish for production? Go ahead, try. Most shops aren't in such a "comfortable" situation.

Exactly contrary: Spring. Decoupled programming model from infrastructure. Go take current 3.0.x and use @Inject, JPA 2 and the like in your Tomcat or legacy application server.

Answer 3

Since Will and Oliver already said the most crucial stuff I'll only add that: "if it works and does the job done, then leave it alone!". "Newer" and "standardized" doesn't always equal "better", in fact it rarely does - new things are clunky and buggy and (that's the most important to me) not widely supported. If the rest of JEE6 is as "standardized" as JSF2.0 (and all the Rich/Ice/Prime/WhateverFaces), then believe me stick to Spring for now. A lot of companies stick to a bit older technologies for a reason (stability > *), Spring's been on the market for years and is well established.