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Enrico Costanzi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at Intesys
Real User
Jun 1, 2020
Very smooth implementation; excellent features for monitoring and tracking network calls
Pros and Cons
  • "Features that help with monitoring and tracking network calls between several micro services."
  • "Once you know how to use this solution, it's very easy, especially when building APIs."
  • "Having to restart the application to reload properties."
  • "I think that security is a delicate issue in this product. It's not as easy as in other technologies so unless you already have something configured it can't be done with a junior developer."

What is our primary use case?

My primary use case is to develop APIs used by single-page applications. It's almost exclusively for web applications and sometimes for communication between micro services, meaning two Spring Boot apps talking to each other. I develop API and the processes, using open API to define before developing them. With Spring Boot we generate the code and we serve the API's to this single-page application or other micro services. I use it almost every day. It's open source, so we don't have any partnership with them, we're a customer. I'm a software engineer. 

What is most valuable?

Once you know how to use this solution, it's very easy, especially when building APIs. It has easily understandable convention and is an opinionated framework because of its conventional configurations. It helps build apps very fast and in particular Spring Data JPA  and Maven plugins are very useful in generating code like open API plugin. I like all the features that help with monitoring and tracking network calls between several micro services. Usually when I develop with other tele frameworks or technologies, there are things that don't work but this is not case with Spring Boots. Almost everything works smoothly and upgrading from one version to the next is very easy.

What needs improvement?

I think that security is a delicate issue in this product. It's not as easy as in other technologies so unless you already have something configured it can't be done with a junior developer. You need some experience to do that properly and to understand how Spring security works.

In addition, as many developers say, sometimes you can see too much magic without really understanding what's happening under the hood. This is the main benefit of Spring Boot, but also a disadvantage in the event that the convention doesn't work and needs to be customized. 

An additional feature they could consider would be the ability to reload properties without having to restart the application. It's one of the things I miss most. There is a solution that requires cloud tools, but there's no way to do it with a simple configuration.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using this solution for about seven years. 

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Once you understand the solution, it's very stable and unless you have an error in Java, it's very stable. I don't have many crashes or bugs related to the stability of the product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability depends on how and what features you use. If you have to scale a stateless API application, it's easy because you can scale it horizontally, ensuring that all the shared resources are available and that if the nodes need to talk to each other, they can. Spring Cloud helps and it's well supported and documented.

How are customer service and support?

In terms of support, the documentation they provide is one of the best around and the community is very helpful. It's a very big community, so you always find the resources that you need. I've never had to contact technical support, I just open any issues on GitHub Bird to get a better idea of some concepts or problems I might have. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

The difference between Spring Boot and other systems is the ecosystem and the  community which allows for testing. Other frameworks like Python, Django, have a much smaller community so it's more difficult to get information. I also use Liferay, which is a huge monolith but has a very small community. When you need help, you need to go to the forum and wait for someone to reply to your question. It can take weeks or even months to get a proper reply because the community is so small. It's an important and valuable feature of Spring. 

How was the initial setup?

There is a website called data.spring.iu where you can choose modules and download the zip file where you can start to develop, so it's easy. Deployment is simple because it's just one configuration file . If you are not an expert in servers or cloud providers, you might have some work to do but it's only one file and a few steps.

What other advice do I have?

For anyone wanting to implement Spring Boot, I would recommend watching the developer, Josh Long, on You Tube. He has a lot of explanation videos showing the basics of Spring Boot. It shows what you can do in few steps, and you can then go to start.spring.iu, download your first project and start working on it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
CEO at Modal Technologies Corporation
Real User
Mar 14, 2020
Good security and integration, and the autowiring feature saves on development time
Pros and Cons
  • "I have found the starter solutions valuable, as well as integration with other products."
  • "Spring Boot has sped time to market and has also improved testability, hence also improving the quality of deployed solutions."
  • "Perhaps an even lighter-weight, leaner version could be made available, to compete with alternative solutions, such as NodeJS."

What is our primary use case?

I primarily rely on Spring Boot as the core microservices framework, used for creating myriad solutions for health care and for the financial services industries. Environments change, depending on client commitments and budgets, but Spring Boot remains as the successful nexus for all development.

I have used it for both SQL and NoSQL solutions, including both caching and non-caching environments. With over 20 Spring modules to select for possible augmentation of the basic Spring Boot platform, there is nearly always a solution available.

In cases, where some additional, narrow functionality is still lacking, many existing solutions can be integrated into the Spring Boot Java framework, even if that functionality is not part of an official Spring Boot add-on module.

How has it helped my organization?

Spring Boot has sped time to market and has also improved testability, hence also improving the quality of deployed solutions. By eliminating the need for XML configuration, Spring Boot has also been instrumental in improving application performance, since this shift away from XML has provided an impetus to migrate from SOAP to RESTful services.

Also, Spring Boot has facilitated cloud migrations, since now the application can be deployed as a simple JAR file. Where Spring Boot has not helped has been with clients, who insist on moving away from Java (and .NET), towards lighter-weight solutions, such as NodeJS.

What is most valuable?

I have found the starter solutions valuable, as well as integration with other products.  For example, the MongoDB Repository feature is extremely helpful. Also, the integration with Spring Data JPA is valuable for accessing familiar JPA query functionality.

Spring Security facilitates the handling of standard security measures.

The Spring Boot annotations make it easy to handle routing for microservices and to access request and response objects.

Other annotations included with Spring Boot enable move away from XML configuration, and, of course, autowiring removes the necessity for creating objects in many scenarios.

What needs improvement?

Perhaps an even lighter-weight, leaner version could be made available, to compete with alternative solutions, such as NodeJS.

It would also be extremely helpful if hand-holding templates were provided, to quickly guide new developers through the entire end-to-end process of developing a solution with Spring Boot. These aids could be in question or checkbox answer format, which would then trigger the appropriate guides. The guides should be geared to developer tasks. For example, after the neophyte Spring Boot developer answers some questions, the guide might say, "OK, then, you will want to put your MongoDB queries in the MongoDB Repository that you have created. You can use this @Query format..."

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Spring Boot for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

My impression is that Spring Boot is highly stable. In fact, I have not seen any stability problems, at all, since I have been using it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Spring Boot scales well. Care must be taken if any state is to be maintained since maximum scalability would be associated with a singleton instance of the application.

How are customer service and technical support?

A deep and wide community provides substantial support for the entire Spring Boot ecosystem.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, I used the traditional Spring and EJB. Performance, error-prone XML SOAP layer, XML-weak developer skillset, as well as increased ease of Cloud deployment were prime motivators for switching to Spring Boot.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward due to the extensive starter project support online. Also, there is vast community support online for Spring Boot.

What about the implementation team?

Developers implemented without any vendor team support.

What was our ROI?

Since Spring Boot, as well as the associated Eclipse IDE (with the Spring Tool Suite, STS, installed) are free, ROI is extremely high. The only investment is developer training, which is minimized, in part by having starter projects available online, and in part, by the simplicity of the design of the platform.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Spring Boot is free; even the Spring Tools Suite for Eclipse is free.

I advise others to use the cost savings to invest in Postman Pro, and to use that product to create and run suites of integration testing, whenever changes are made to the code base. I even advise moving unit testing to Postman Pro test scripts, which can be run by testers, in addition to developers. In this way, zero-defect applications can be deployed and supported.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The closest competitor was a totally different option: NodeJS/React.

What other advice do I have?

Spring Boot is a great way to implement microservices in the Cloud. It is an especially good choice if the requirements include background processing and calculations, which make the application a poor candidate for a lighter-weight solution, such as NodeJS.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
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CEO at a government with 1-10 employees
Real User
Nov 28, 2019
A great product that simplifies development for business applications
Pros and Cons
  • "It's great because it simplifies development, and together with MyBatis they make a beautiful pair for Java development."
  • "The product could be improved by supporting and integrating Hadoop."

What is our primary use case?

I'm the CEO of our company and a user of Spring Boot. I use the product on a daily basis for business applications. It's great because it simplifies development. Together with MyBatis, they make a beautiful pair for Java development. I'll be developing with Spring Boot in the future.

What needs improvement?

The product could be improved by supporting and integrating Hadoop. A year ago Spring Boot announced that they were removing Hadoop support from the product but many software companies work with Hadoop and Cassandra, and I really think that Spring Boot should renew the Hadoop connection. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Spring Boot since 2003 when the framework was created.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's a very stable product. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

As a Java program, it's very scalable.

How are customer service and technical support?

I haven't had any issues where I've required technical support. I know there is a blog and many forums where questions can be answered and Spring Boot is discussed. There are somewhere between five and 10 different software forums. 

How was the initial setup?

Setup of the program is very simple, it takes about a minute. 

What other advice do I have?

As a product that is a Java framework, it's better and a lot more simple than other similar frameworks. 

I would rate this product a nine out of 10. 

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Enterprise Solutions Architect / Big Data Architect at a security firm with 51-200 employees
Real User
Aug 20, 2018
Makes it difficult to support a specific functionality in a user-friendly manner, but simplifies application deployment
Pros and Cons
  • "Spring Boot is much easier when it comes to the configuration, setup, installation, and deployment of your applications, compared to any kind of MVC framework. It has everything within a single framework."
  • "Spring Boot is lacking visibility in terms of how that business process or business rule would look within your application. Because everything has been embedded within the code itself, it disables the visibility. the ability to maintain or even support a specific functionality in a user-friendly manner, where a developer can come up and just adjust that part of that process."
  • "Spring Boot is lacking visibility in terms of how that business process or business rule would look within your application."

What is our primary use case?

Our use of this solution is related to creating microservices, based on microservices architecture that we're implementing now.

How has it helped my organization?

Since microservices are totally linked to the business capabilities and, at the same time, it is a way or a style of handling the business functionality and the business processes, Spring Boot comes into the picture where you are just focusing on building microservices for one specific business function. So that has been really helpful. You can have both the UI part and the API part, so that the microservice can be utilized either with other applications or it can be used independently.

What is most valuable?

Spring Boot is much easier when it comes to the configuration, setup, installation, and deployment of your applications, compared to any kind of MVC framework. It has everything within a single framework, rather than having the hassle of installing, setting up, or even deploying a regular MVC framework.

What needs improvement?

I'm not one who is really obsessed with Spring Boot. It's a tool. But at the same time, I would rather use other things like a BPMN engine to do the work because Spring Boot is lacking visibility in terms of how that business process or business rule would look within your application. Because everything has been embedded within the code itself, it disables the visibility and the ability to maintain or even support a specific functionality in a user-friendly manner, where a developer can come up and just adjust that part of that process.

I'd rather go for a BPMN tool or engine that will reduce development time, rather than spending the whole time writing a tiny function for linking activities or tasks together.
I would rather use a BPMN engine just to focus on the business link and, at the same time, to have that type of visibility and agility, not to mention, of course, the consistency between consumer processes and the business ability.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's a scalable solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Spring Boot is an open-source tool, a framework.

What other advice do I have?

You need to have that user-friendliness so that it's really easy for both business and even IT to use the same engine. When it comes to modeling, it shouldn't be like a foreign language between IT and the business. It should be very easy to manipulate, very easy to create, very easy to design.

My most important criteria when selecting a vendor depend on specific business requirements. The business is always looking to speed up the production of these services. So agility is number one. The second is going to be the productivity and effectiveness. The third is related to the user experience; and finally, the customer support side.

I would give Spring Boot a five out of 10. Spring, as a framework, is really complex. It's not really easy for a beginner or even an intermediate developer.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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