Spring is an open-source framework that provides a comprehensive programming and configuration model for modern Java-based enterprise applications, regardless of the kind of deployment platform. It was first released under the Apache 2.0 license in June 2003 and has since evolved through various versions, each introducing new features and capabilities[2][5].
At its core, Spring facilitates the creation of loosely coupled applications by providing infrastructural support at the application level. This allows developers to focus on the business logic of their applications without being tied to specific deployment environments. The framework is known for its dependency injection feature, which allows objects to define their dependencies that the Spring container injects later. This results in modular applications composed of loosely coupled components, which are ideal for enterprise applications[2][4][5].
Spring's features include, but are not limited to, an inversion of control (IoC) container, aspect-oriented programming (AOP), transaction management, and a wide range of modules for various tasks such as data binding, type conversion, validation, resource management, event handling, internationalization, and more. It also integrates with various Java EE technologies and has adopted the Jakarta namespace to use many of the new and updated Jakarta EE specifications[2][4][5].
