Introduction

Spring Framework is the foundation of the entire Spring ecosystem — a comprehensive, lightweight framework for building Java enterprise applications.

Spring Boot is an opinionated, convention-over-configuration extension of Spring Framework that eliminates boilerplate setup.

Spring Boot's advantages go beyond saving setup time.

Spring Framework and Spring Boot are not competing technologies — Spring Boot is built on top of Spring Framework.

Spring Boot follows a layered architecture that separates concerns clearly — presentation, business logic, data access, and the database.

When you run a Spring Boot application, a sophisticated sequence of events unfolds in milliseconds — auto-configuration decisions are made, beans are created, an…

Spring Boot ships with a rich set of features that go well beyond auto-configuration and embedded servers.

Spring Boot starters are curated dependency descriptors that bring in everything needed for a specific feature — all at compatible, tested versions.

Auto-configuration is the engine behind Spring Boot's 'just works' experience.

Spring Boot's dependency management eliminates one of the most painful parts of Java development — version conflicts.

Spring Boot CLI is a command-line tool that lets you run Groovy scripts as full Spring Boot applications — no pom.xml, no project structure, no main method required.

Spring Initializr is the official project generator for Spring Boot applications.

A well-organized Spring Boot project structure makes code easy to navigate, test, and maintain.

Spring Boot DevTools is a set of development-time tools that dramatically speed up the inner development loop.

Spring Boot is annotation-driven — nearly every behavior is configured through annotations rather than XML or boilerplate code.