Book excerpt: The Spring Framework project is a Java/J2EE framework designed to make developing applications easier. It includes JavaBeans-based configuration, an AOP framework, declarative transaction management, persistence frameworks support (i.e. Hibernate and iBatis, as well as JDBC) and a web MVC framework. Spring Live is designed to explain how to integrate Spring into your projects to make software development easier. It is aimed at users that are familiar with Java development, but have never used Spring. As you read this title, you will learn how Spring reduces the amount of code you have to write and why it's getting so much attention (and respect) from the Java community.