End of Spring vs EJB wars in sight?
Tonight I watched a video of Rod Johnson doing a presentation on Spring 2.5 at Google. He said that Spring 3.0 will be an EJB 3.1 Lite compatible container so that the Spring Application Platform can get the Java EE 6 Web Profile certification if the expert group chooses to include it in Web Profile. Spring will also be a full featured EJB 3.1 implementation for use in the WebLogic application server. The Java EE 6 expert group has polled the community and it seems that most developers want the larger Web Profile which includes EE 6 technologies intended for the web. I wonder if the expert group has decided which Web Profile proposal to use, and whether or not JSF + Web Beans will be included? In Rod's video he mentioned that the design of Spring 2.5's dependency injection annotations are based on lessons learned from EJB 3.0's @Resource and Google's Guice. I am interested in knowing his thoughts on Web Beans annotations which is also third generation, and if Spring will become an implementation of it.
Anyway, I think this news is a BIG DEAL for EJB, as much as JPA was. If Java EE 6 Web Profile includes EJB 3.1 Lite and Spring is an EJB 3.1 container without requiring addons, then developers might choose to use the JSR standard annotations and XML over implementation specific ones for all of their work. This will be even more desirable if Java EE 6 Web Profile includes Web Beans and Spring has built-in support for that too. In the video Rod encouraged developers to use EJB's @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy annotations because they are standardized and Spring has built-in support for them. This could be the end of Spring vs EJB wars.
Look at what JPA (from EJB 3.0 expert group) did to the industry. Today many developers prefer to code using JPA standardized annotations and XML configuration by default, and only use implementation specific features where JPA is lacking until the next revision of the standard comes out.
To learn about the many new features in EJB 3.1, read Reza Rahman's series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
Originally posted on ryandelaplante.com
Ryan deLaplante is a software developer located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has been working for IJW Software Corporation for over ten years creating enterprise systems for the hospitality industry. His favorite programming language is Java and mostly blogs about Java Enterprise Edition. Ryan is a DZone MVB and is not an employee of DZone and has posted 11 posts at DZone.
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Comments
Sidewinder replied on Fri, 2008/09/12 - 9:08pm
EJB 3.1 will rocks thats for sure but I like to have choices, I hope Spring and Mr.Rod come with something new or inovative so there still a choice.
Regrds.
Kenneth replied on Sat, 2008/09/13 - 2:15am
Sidewinder replied on Sat, 2008/09/13 - 6:26am
Well the discussion of years of EJB vs Spring worked, EJB at last adopted the Spring model, Lightweight container, POJO's, profiles etc.
So I think Mr.Rod Johnson was right all the time.
Regards.
george.jiang replied on Sat, 2008/09/13 - 9:13am
ramon wang replied on Tue, 2008/09/16 - 2:39am
Jeroen Wenting replied on Wed, 2008/09/17 - 3:13am
Alessandro Santini replied on Mon, 2008/09/22 - 1:59pm
Jeroen Wenting replied on Tue, 2008/09/23 - 5:57am
Spring has been released under the APL 2 for a long time now.
Nothing wrong with that apart from a few GPL zealots not liking it (and IMO that's an advantage of any license that they don't like).
sunrise1 replied on Sat, 2009/10/24 - 4:52am