As I have begun checking up on Spring, it has been interesting to trace its origin. I have ended up learning that Rod Johnson is a driving force of Spring. His book Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development has a first chapter that was revolutionary for me in terms of laying out the realities of J2EE and EJB development. That writing was a real light bulb for many of the folks in the AJUG SCEA study group that I participated in over the past several months.
My interest was piqued when I saw another book by Rod Johnson with a title almost identical to the other book, Expert One-on-One J2EE Development without EJB. I mean, that pretty much lays it out there, huh? When the topic of not using part of a platform merits a book by the same author who has a not-so-old title on the platform at large, that’s something to look into. Finding out that Rod is behind Spring bolstered my resolve to give it a go.
Once my shipment from Amazon arrives, I will have all three of the books for Spring that are referenced on the project website. I am willing to bet that this framework and others like Hibernate will become disruptive in the J2EE circles. And quite honestly, until Enterprise Java Beans gets its overhaul that we are all hoping for in the 3.0 specification, we need some disruption.