Spring vs. Spring Boot vs. Spring MVC

Spring vs. Spring Boot

Spring: Spring Framework is the most popular application development framework of Java. The main feature of the Spring Framework is dependency Injection or Inversion of Control (IoC). With the help of Spring Framework, we can develop a loosely coupled application. It is better to use if application type or characteristics are purely defined.

Spring Boot: Spring Boot is a module of Spring Framework. It allows us to build a stand-alone application with minimal or zero configurations. It is better to use if we want to develop a simple Spring-based application or RESTful services.

The primary comparison between Spring and Spring Boot are discussed below:

Spring	Spring Boot
Spring Framework is a widely used Java EE framework for building applications.	Spring Boot Framework is widely used to develop REST APIs.
It aims to simplify Java EE development that makes developers more productive.	It aims to shorten the code length and provide the easiest way to develop Web Applications.
The primary feature of the Spring Framework is dependency injection.	The primary feature of Spring Boot is Autoconfiguration. It automatically configures the classes based on the requirement.
It helps to make things simpler by allowing us to develop loosely coupled applications.	It helps to create a stand-alone application with less configuration.
The developer writes a lot of code (boilerplate code) to do the minimal task.	It reduces boilerplate code.
To test the Spring project, we need to set up the sever explicitly.	Spring Boot offers embedded server such as Jetty and Tomcat, etc.
It does not provide support for an in-memory database.	It offers several plugins for working with an embedded and in-memory database such as H2.
Developers manually define dependencies for the Spring project in pom.xml.	Spring Boot comes with the concept of starter in pom.xml file that internally takes care of downloading the dependencies JARs based on Spring Boot Requirement.

Spring Boot vs. Spring MVC

Spring Boot: Spring Boot makes it easy to quickly bootstrap and start developing a Spring-based application. It avoids a lot of boilerplate code. It hides a lot of complexity behind the scene so that the developer can quickly get started and develop Spring-based applications easily.

Spring MVC: Spring MVC is a Web MVC Framework for building web applications. It contains a lot of configuration files for various capabilities. It is an HTTP oriented web application development framework.

Spring Boot and Spring MVC exist for different purposes. The primary comparison between Spring Boot and Spring MVC are discussed below:

Spring Boot	Spring MVC
Spring Boot is a module of Spring for packaging the Spring-based application with sensible defaults.	Spring MVC is a model view controller-based web framework under the Spring framework.
It provides default configurations to build Spring-powered framework.	It provides ready to use features for building a web application.
There is no need to build configuration manually.	It requires build configuration manually.
There is no requirement for a deployment descriptor.	A Deployment descriptor is required.
It avoids boilerplate code and wraps dependencies together in a single unit.	It specifies each dependency separately.
It reduces development time and increases productivity.	It takes more time to achieve the same.