Spring Framework 5.0 is the first major upgrade in Spring Framework, almost four years after Spring Framework 4.0. In this time frame, one of the major developments has been the evolution of the Spring Boot project. We will discuss the new features in Spring Boot 2.0 in the next section.

One of the biggest features of Spring Framework 5.0 is Reactive Programming. Core reactive programming features and support for reactive endpoints are available out of the box with Spring Framework 5.0. The list of important changes includes the following:

• Baseline upgrades
• JDK 9 runtime compatibility
• Usage of JDK 8 features in the Spring Framework code
• Reactive programming support
• A functional web framework
• Java modularity with Jigsaw
• Kotlin support
• Dropped features