Java’s own EJB and Spring framework

In the world of Java there are lot of possibilities. Those possibilities range from game development to cloud-based applications, server-side apps to Internet of Things and machine learning and more.

Especially in the world of server-side enterprise application development, Enterprise Java Beans was an early technology designed to make server-side development easier in Java. It could handle transaction processing, persistence, security and more. However EJBs were somehow cumbersome due to the amount of configuration required.

Around 2002 Spring was created as an alternative to EJBs and its heavy-weight containers. It is a highly flexible framework used mainly for building Java web applications. In addition, Spring makes programming Java quicker, easier, and safer for everybody. Its focus on speed, simplicity, and productivity has made it the world’s most popular Java framework.

The issues on ground

EJB had several issues that made them challenging to work with. Some of the key issues include:

1. Complexity: EJBs were often criticized for being overly complex, especially in earlier versions. Developing and deploying EJBs required dealing with a lot of configuration and boilerplate code.
2. Performance: EJBs were known to have performance issues, especially in terms of their remote method invocation (RMI) mechanism. This was due to the overhead of serialization/deserialization and network communication.
3. Transaction Management: EJB’s container-managed transactions (CMT) could be restrictive and cumbersome to configure, leading to performance and maintenance issues.
4. Scalability: EJBs were seen as not very scalable, especially in terms of their heavy use of server-side resources.
5. Complex Deployment: Deploying EJBs required deploying them to an application server, which could be complex and time-consuming compared to simpler deployment mechanisms.

Spring resolves this issues by making things simpler, quicker, and better. Spring is open source with a large community backing making it easier to ask for help.

How popular is Spring framework

In 2024, it is to be noted that Spring still is a top choice among software developer and one thing that has kept its appeal is the addition of latest useful feature that improves the developer experience. According to Jet Brains’s 2033 Developer Ecosystem survey, Spring Boot leads followed by Spring MVC. This is also the case with Continuum’s Java Ecosystem 2023 Survey Results

Conclusion

Overall, Spring’s simplicity, flexibility, testing support, lack of vendor lock-in, integration capabilities, and community support make it a preferred choice for many developers over EJB.