The first version of Spring Framework 1.0 was released in March 2004. For more than a decade and a half, Spring Framework remained the framework of choice to build Java applications.

In the relatively young and dynamic world of Java frameworks, a decade is a long time.

In this chapter, we start with understanding the core features of Spring Framework. We will look at why the Spring Framework became popular and how it adapted to remain the framework of choice. After taking a quick look at the important modules in the Spring Framework, we will jump into the world of Spring Projects. We will end the chapter by looking at the new features in Spring Framework 5.0.

This chapter will answer the following questions:

• Why is Spring Framework popular?
• How has Spring Framework adapted to the evolution of application architectures?
• What are the important modules in Spring Framework?
• Where does Spring Framework fit in the umbrella of Spring Projects?
• What are the new features in Spring Framework 5.0?