Modules of Spring Framework

Introduction :

Spring Framework is a Java platform that provides comprehensive infrastructure support for developing Java applications. Spring handles the infrastructure so you can focus on your application.
Spring enables you to build applications from “plain old Java objects” (POJOs) and to apply enterprise services non-invasively to POJOs. This capability applies to the Java SE programming model and to full and partial Java EE.
Examples of how you, as an application developer, can use the Spring platform advantage:

• Make a Java method execute in a database transaction without having to deal with transaction APIs.
  
• Make a local Java method a remote procedure without having to deal with remote APIs.
  
• Make a local Java method a management operation without having to deal with JMX APIs.
  
• Make a local Java method a message handler without having to deal with JMS APIs.
  
  (Reference : http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.2.x/spring-framework-reference/html/overview.html)
  
  Modules  of Spring Framework :
  
  

  Core Container

  The Core Container consists of the Core, Beans, Context, and Expression Language modules.
  The Core and Beans modules provide the fundamental parts of the framework, including the IoC and Dependency Injection features. The BeanFactory is a sophisticated implementation of the factory pattern. It removes the need for programmatic singletons and allows you to decouple the configuration and specification of dependencies from your actual program logic.
  The Context module builds on the solid base provided by the Core and Beans modules: it is a means to access objects in a framework-style manner that is similar to a JNDI registry. The Context module inherits its features from the Beans module and adds support for internationalization (using, for example, resource bundles), event-propagation, resource-loading, and the transparent creation of contexts by, for example, a servlet container. The Context module also supports Java EE features such as EJB, JMX ,and basic remoting. The ApplicationContext interface is the focal point of the Context module.
  The Expression Language module provides a powerful expression language for querying and manipulating an object graph at runtime. It is an extension of the unified expression language (unified EL) as specified in the JSP 2.1 specification. The language supports setting and getting property values, property assignment, method invocation, accessing the context of arrays, collections and indexers, logical and arithmetic operators, named variables, and retrieval of objects by name from Spring's IoC container. It also supports list projection and selection as well as common list aggregations.
  

  Data Access/Integration

  The Data Access/Integration layer consists of the JDBC, ORM, OXM, JMS and Transaction modules.
  

  Web

  The Web layer consists of the Web, Web-Servlet, Web-Struts, and Web-Portlet modules.
  Spring's Web module provides basic web-oriented integration features such as multipart file-upload functionality and the initialization of the IoC container using servlet listeners and a web-oriented application context. It also contains the web-related parts of Spring's remoting support.
  

  AOP and Instrumentation

  Spring's AOP module provides an AOP Alliance-compliant aspect-oriented programming implementation allowing you to define, for example, method-interceptors and pointcuts to cleanly decouple code that implements functionality that should be separated. Using source-level metadata functionality, you can also incorporate behavioral information into your code, in a manner similar to that of .NET attributes.
  The separate Aspects module provides integration with AspectJ.
  The Instrumentation module provides class instrumentation support and classloader implementations to be used in certain application servers.
  

  Test

  The Test module supports the testing of Spring components with JUnit or TestNG. It provides consistent loading of Spring ApplicationContexts and caching of those contexts. It also provides mock objects that you can use to test your code in isolation.