Spring is a fresh breeze blowing over the Java landscape. Based on a design principle called Inversion of Control, Spring is a powerful but lightweight J2EE framework that does not require the use of EJBs. Spring greatly reduces the complexity of using interfaces, and speeds and simplifies your application development. You get the power and robust features of EJB and get to keep the simplicity of the non-enterprise JavaBean. Spring in Action introduces you to the ideas behind Spring and then quickly launches into a hands-on exploration of the framework. Combining short code snippets and an ongoing example developed throughout the book, it shows you how to build simple and efficient J2EE applications. You will see how to solve persistence problems using the leading open-source tools, and also how to integrate your application with the most popular web frameworks. You will learn how to use Spring to manage the bulk of your infrastructure code so you can focus on what really matters your critical business needs.