In this article, we will learn what is a Spring Boot and its features along with that we will also know what are the advantages and disadvantages of a Spring Boot.
Table of contents
Spring Boot is a java based framework used to create standalone microservices. Microservices are single-function modules that are scalable, loosely coupled, and can be tested independently. Spring Boot gives developers an extremely fast way to build and deploy java based applications and services.
Features of Spring Boot
- Starter packs are available as part of dependency injection that is used to simplify builds. Ex: The single spring-boot-starter-web dependency can pull in all the dependencies related to web development.
- Boilerplate configurations and code are reduced, that in turn helps to create the applications a lot faster. Ex: @EnableAutoConfiguration: Spring automatically creates beans available on the classpath using this feature.
- Embedded server and In-Memory database support. Ex: Tomcat is the default server used to run the Spring Boot application. We don’t have to explicitly deploy the executable.
- Provides management endpoints or actuator endpoints that help to know the health, information, metrics, etc of the running application.
- Dynamic reloading of the application during the development phase. Ex: Say we have added some extra piece of code to the existing codebase then we don’t have to compile the changes again, Spring Boot dev tools features do that automatically for us and we will see the updated changes.
- Project-related properties are externalized for the application with the help of .properties and .yml files.
- Developers can choose to use XML or Annotation configurations. Using Annotation configuration is more appealing to Java developers as they don’t have to create any XML files.
Advantages of Spring Boot
- Helps to create standalone Spring-based microservices.
- Minimum code setup and less development time so that developers can focus mainly on business requirements.
- It is easy to integrate with other spring framework ecosystem modules like Spring JPA or security. It is also easy to integrate with other java frameworks like hibernate etc
- Easy to communicate with different Spring Boot microservices.
- Easier to test the Spring Boot applications as it is an individual entity and focuses on a single functionality.
- A large community is supporting Spring Boot. This helps out developers to get the resolution to their questions easily.
- Easier to do the configuration management and scaling of microservices.
Disadvantages of Spring Boot
- Starter packs inject many dependencies which are not required for the project hence creating large deployment files.
- Spring Boot is not suitable to create large monolithic applications.
- It is a very complex and hectic process to convert a legacy application to Spring Boot microservices.
- A project will have multiple microservices so we have to manage the configuration management for all those microservices in different files.
- A project will have multiple microservices so we have to manage the scaling of all those microservices which will be sometimes tricky.
- Different microservices have to communicate within a project via some rest web service calls which are time-consuming.
I hope you found this article interesting and valuable. If you are having any concerns or questions about this article please comment below.