Foreword

Bruce Tate is a great communicatoras you'll know if you've been fortunate enough to hear him present. His communication skills also shine in his books, and this is another fine example. It's well written and to the point. It's also enjoyable to read, and that's important.

With Spring: A Developer's Notebook, Bruce Tate and Justin Gehtland offer a great way to get started with the Spring Framework. You'll find the consistent structure helpful, as it takes you step-by-step through important development activities. You'll find many code examples demonstrating exactly how to use Spring to address common requirements. Although Spring has a large and growing literature, with more books coming out every quarter, this one fills an important gap. If you're new to Spring and need to get started quickly, you need this book.

When I wrote Expert One on One J2EE Design and Development in 2002, I never imagined that the core code from that book would become one of the most important open source frameworks in the world, in the form of the Spring Framework. But it has. Major corporations now use Spring in many different industries and technological environments. Spring powers critical applications in some of the largest banks in Europe and North America. Spring powers logistics applications and enrollment and purchasing systems at major universities. Spring is used in some of the world's leading scientific research organizations. Spring empowers Grid computing, dealer relationships, and countless start-up businesses. It's easy to see why:

• Spring is much simpler than traditional J2EE alternatives. With Spring, you code your applications as plain old Java objects (POJOs), while still enjoying sophisticated transaction, data access, and security services.

• Spring makes applications easier to test. Since components are POJOs, you can run them outside of any container. Because Spring uses important modern concepts such as aspect-oriented programming and dependency injections, coupling is looser. Because the container is fast and light, you can easily run it in integration tests.

• Spring helps remove dependencies from your code, decoupling it from its environment (such as an application server) and the Spring container itself. This protects your investment in your core intellectual property.

As the founder of the Spring project, I've been delighted to see the community grow from strength to strength. Books have played an important role in that progression, from the outset. This book is another important step in helping to bring Spring to a wider audience, and I'm delighted to see an author of Bruce's talent and reputation writing about Spring.

Bruce has always advocated simple, effective, pragmatic solutions, so it's not surprising that he was an early advocate of Spring. He's worked hard to promote the ideas behind Spring, teach it to customers, and win the hearts and minds of others in the industry. Following the bestselling Better, Faster, Lighter Java, this is the second book from his partnership with Justin Gehtland in which he's explained the value propostion and helped developers to benefit from it.

This is a valuable, timely, practical guide. It will help you start out with Spring and develop successful applications. Enjoy, and welcome to the Spring community!

Rod Johnson

CEO, Interface21

Founder, Spring Framework

London, March 2005