Despite all I've read, I still can't figure out what Spring Roo actually is, and that's after reading the first chapter of Spring Roo In Action, What is Spring Roo?! I understand the motivation for simplifying the process of developing a Spring application, but what does Spring Roo actually do?
Can someone summarize the contents of that first chapter, specifically how Spring Roo reduces the complexity of developing a Spring app? The authors will probably see this, so do a good job!
Answer
Spring Roo is a toolchain for rapid development of java application using all, some or none of those technologies:
- Spring
- Spring MVC
- Spring Security
- Spring Web Flow
- AspectJ
- JPA (Hibernate, EclipseLink, TopLink)
- JMS (ActiveMQ, etc.)
- GWT
- JSPX
- JSON
- etc.
If you have developped applications with Rails, you will find this application stack oddly familiar, but applied to the java language. Please note that ROO is not an abstraction layer for those technologies, it is an integration toolchain so that a lot of the boiler-plate is generated for you using some clever part of AspectJ and said technologies.
FYI, I have not affiliated with Spring ROO, I'm making a Proof-of-concept built around it.