And additionaly, all, what you can do with Spring, you can do with JEE.
Some of Spring modules seem to be quite stable enough. Others, the newer modules, will take time to be more mature.
Spring's goal have always been to be the 'glue layer' of the Java standards. Of course, now they want to be the 'glue layer' of everything, including Spring-Data for NoSQL (Neo4J and co.).
Speaking of which, your last statement is partly correct if only Spring == Spring Core. There's no MVC (in the sense of ASP.NET MVC or Rails MVC) in JEE yet (yet because things might change in the future). JEE has 2-3 technology covering the "VC" options: JSP, Servlet, and JSF. None of these are similar to that of ASP.NET MVC or Rails MVC.
"Of course, now they want to be the 'glue layer' of everything, including Spring-Data for NoSQL (Neo4J and co.)."
Why do you need this? It's just Java and you can... just use it. Without glue.
"Speaking of which, your last statement is partly correct if only Spring == Spring Core. There's no MVC (in the sense of ASP.NET MVC or Rails MVC) in JEE yet (yet because things might change in the future). JEE has 2-3 technology covering the "VC" options: JSP, Servlet, and JSF. None of these are similar to that of ASP.NET MVC or Rails MVC."
What do you mean with MVC exactly? This is just buzz word. MVC Model 2 Architecture (and now you have Servlet 3) is good replacement for Spring MVC. JSR303 and JPA (or other) is good replacement for 'M' (and of cource, in Spring it's same way). We talk about Spring or Rails/ASP? And of course, here solutions in Play/Play2.
Really, you don't need Spring. It's 'Bug layer'.
Spring consists of multiple modules that you absolutely _don't_ have to use. This is where, I think, you misunderstood Spring.
When it comes to the modules, i.e.: Spring Core, Spring Transaction, Spring-Data sub-modules, Spring eventually use the JDK and/or 3rd-party API (possibility, in the case of Neo4J etc). Yes, you can use JDBC, JTA, JPA, and Neo4J API directly. For sure. But Spring has always wanted to become an alternative to using them directly by providing more features and supposedly better programming experience.
This is what I meant by _glue_. You're absolutely correct: you can use those libraries directly without Spring. But if Spring modules provide me with better programming model, more features on top of barebone implementations, why would I not use Spring modules? This, again, something that you seem don't quite see from Spring.
Let's say MVC is a buzzword and start from there. If you look at ASP.NET MVC and Rails MVC, they provide a programming model where you have a request mapper/route that maps a request to a method in your controller.
MVC Model 2 architecture does not provide you with that. MVC Model 2 architecture provides you 1:1 mapping between a URL with Servlet. Which means if you do a simple CRUD a'la Resource, you can either have 1 Servlet per Resource that acts as a dispatcher for the CRUD operation via either query parameters or multiple Servlets. Again, if you choose to live with that, that's your choice.
Spring offers a better programming model than MVC Model 2 architecture and there are people out there that prefer it. Spring also offers WebFlow, a module on top of Spring-MVC that helps building Wizard or Shopping Chart that involves lifecycle/steps. Can you live without it? For sure. Roll your own.
That's one, second, in Rails MVC, you can set the content negotiation to send back either JSON, XML, or HTML. You can do this with JAX-RS but that is a separate "servlet" per-se. If you want your API to live in a different part of your systems, this is acceptable. But if you want all of the request comes from one entry-point, you have to work harder than that.
Calling Spring as a 'Bug Layer' reminds me of this article:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/03/the-first-rule-of-p...
