For enterprise Java developers, Spring Framework provides remarkable improvements in developer productivity, runtime performance, and overall application quality. Its unique blend of a complete, lightweight container that allows you to build a complex application from loosely-coupled POJOs and a set of easily understood abstractions that simplify construction, testing, and deployment make Spring both powerful and easy-to-use—a hard-to-beat combination. With this power comes the potential for a wide range of uses in both common and not-so-common scenarios. That's where Spring in Practice comes in.

Unlike the many books that teach you what Spring is, Spring in Practice shows you how to tackle the challenges you face when you build Spring-based applications. The book empowers software developers to solve concrete business problems "the Spring way" by mapping application-level issues to Spring-centric solutions.

Spring in Practice diverges from other cookbooks because it presents the background you need to understand the domain in which a solution applies before it offers the specific steps to solve the problem. You're never left with the feeling that you understand the answer, but find the question irrelevant. You can put the book to immediate use even if you don't have deep knowledge of every part of Spring Framework.

The book divides into three main parts. In Part 1, you'll get a rapid overview of Spring Framework—enough to get you started if you're new and a great refresher for readers who already have a few Spring cycles. Part 2 provides techniques that are likely to be useful no matter what type of application you're building. You'll find discussions of topics like user accounts, security, site navigation, and application diagnosis.

Part 3 provides domain-specific recipes. Here, you'll find practical solutions to realistic and interesting business problems. For example, this part discusses Spring-based approaches for ecommerce, lead generation, and CRM.

There are several recurring themes throughout Spring in Practice, including Spring MVC, Hibernate, and transactions. Each recipe is an opportunity to highlight something new or interesting about Spring, and to focus on that concept in detail.

This book assumes you have a good foundation in Java and Java EE. Prior exposure to Spring Framework is helpful, but not required.

Willie Wheeler is an IT Director for the Apollo Group. He has eleven years of experience in Java/Java EE development including four years with the Spring Framework.

John Wheeler develops Java software using Spring Framework for government, education, and private business. Willie and John are brothers who have published technical articles and speak on Spring and other topics.