COMPARISON BETWEEN SPRING AND ASP.NET FRAMEWORKS

C

SPRING

ASP.NET

Preeti Malik (pm2371)

Instructor: Prof. Gail Kaiser

COMS E6125: Web-enhanced Information Management (Spring 2009)

ASP.NET MVC

IMPLEMENTATION

Controllers are C# or VB.NET classes with public

methods called ‘actions’. Every controller action returns an action result.

URL: localhost:8080/DayPlanner/MyController/handleRequest URL: localhost:8080/DayPlanner/MyController/handleRequest

Views are .aspx pages + master pages + code behind

classes. These are one type of action result.

Model classes use ADO.NET API to fetch data from

database. There is a parameter in the .aspx page called ‘inherits’ using which you can associate a model class with a view.

S

PRING

MVC

IMPLEMENTATION

More comprehensive implementation of the MVC design

pattern.

Made up of simple plain-old-Java-objects or beans defined in

a single XML configuration file.

Uses ‘Handler Mappings’ to map incoming requests to a
Uses ‘Handler Mappings’ to map incoming requests to a

corresponding Controller.

Every Controller returns an instance of ModelAndView class.
The view name is resolved to a particular view (JSP, Velocity

Template) using ViewResolvers.

Model consists of a reference data hash map:

Command object
Other reference data

T

HE

S

PRING

F

RAMEWORK

H

MVC

?

SPRING ASP.NET

Web module + other enterprise application modules

Strictly a web MVC framework

All configuration stored in a separate XML configuration file (DI/IoC)

Configuration mainly maintained inside application source code

Offers wide variety if Controllers depending on:

- how much configuration we want to specify and where

Offers only one type of Controller

specify and where

- amount of coupling between Controller and View through the command object

Several types of Handler Mappings provide flexibility in mapping URLs to Controllers

Tight coupling between URL and Class action name

Mature Handler Interceptors capable of pre- and post-request processing (using AOP)

Provides only pre-request processing

Offers different view technologies and provides wide variety of ViewResolvers

D

EPENDENCY

I

NJECTION

(DI)

AND

I

NVERSION OF

C

ONTROL

(I

O

C)

Spring

Implemented through the Java classes of the IoC

Container

Configuration file is parsed to create fully populated

java object for each of the beans java object for each of the beans

Birth of SPRING.NET

ASP.NET

Need to use pluggable frameworks like Castle,

ObjectBuilder, StructureMap or Microsoft Entity Framework (MEF) to achieve DI/IoC

The model class may have one bean inside another

D

ATA

A

CCESS

Managing complex SQL queries and transactions in

industry projects needs use of frameworks like Hibernate, iBATIS etc.

Spring

Provides a consistent API to deal with each
Provides a consistent API to deal with each

framework in a vendor database-independent way.

ORM and DAO modules contain the classes that

compose this generic API.

Provides common way to deal with exceptions

specific to a database

Provides its own transaction management and is also

capable of using transaction management from these frameworks.

D

ATA

A

CCESS

C

ONTD

.

ADO.NET is used to connect to Microsoft supported

databases like MS SQL Server, MS Access etc.

Unlike Spring, the programming interface for a MS

SQL Server is different from a MS Access. SQL Server is different from a MS Access.

ADO.NET is capable of parsing XML data and

writing into a XML file. This feature is absent in Spring

Transaction management is provided by ADO.NET,

COM+ and classes in the System.Transactions namespace

C

ACHING

All beans are singletons. The instance of each bean is

cached for all requests.

Caching content like web pages is left to the

developer or to third party frameworks like Jcache or Ehcache.

Ehcache.

ASP.NET

Output Caching: Stores web pages and user control

responses

Traditional Application Data Caching: Stores data

A

SPECT

-O

RIENTED

P

ROGRAMMING

(AOP)

AOP complements object-oriented programming

by providing another way of thinking about program structure.

Example: Logging, Filtering
SpringSpring

Custom aspects can be written

AOP module provides methods such as preHandle()

and postHandle() for this purpose

Handler Interceptors are used for filtering
ASP.NET

Does not directly support AOP

Makes use of external frameworks like Aspect# and

O

THER COMPARISONS

Other Aspects Spring ASP.NET

Validation Only server-side

validations are included. Client-side validations are left to the developer.

Both client and server-side validations provided

Security End configuration where application is deployed is not known. Acegi

Benefits of the

exhaustive Windows authentication,

is not known. Acegi Security was born.

authentication, impersonation and authorization done by the OS and the IIS web server.

Testing - Unit testing possible because beans are loosely coupled

- Libraries included for integration testing

Doesn’t by itself provide classes for testing.

Depends on Visual Studio IDE and other provided namespaces for this purpose.

C

ONCLUSION

Complete IDE

Reduced Development Cycles

Spring

Demands a steeper learning curve of the developer
Demands a steeper learning curve of the developer

Comprehensive infrastructural support for developing

enterprise applications

Recognizes several vendor solutions and provides a

consistent interface to each

It employs best practices in a highly tuned manner

and uses proven patterns to help construct robust applications

R

EFERENCES

[1] Microsoft MSDN Library Whitepapers, ASP.NET and Struts: Web Application Architectures <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa478961.aspx>

[2] Spring Source, The Spring 2.0 Reference Manual <http://www.springsource.org/documentation>

[3] The official Microsoft ASP.NET MVC tutorials http://www.asp.net/Learn/mvc/ [4]Thomas Risberg, Rick Evans, Portia Tung, Developing a Spring framework MVC

application http://static.springframework.org/docs/Spring-MVC-step-by-step/ [5] Microsoft Whitepapers. Why ASP.NET?

http://www.asp.net/whitepaper/whyaspnet.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=1 http://www.asp.net/whitepaper/whyaspnet.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=1

[6] Billy McCafferty, Dependency Injection for Loose Coupling in .NET. April 2006.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/architecture/DependencyInjection.aspx [7] The official ASP.NET Data Access Tutorials

<www.asp.net/Learn/data-access/>

[8] Microsoft MSDN library. ASP.NET Caching features <msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xsbfdd8c(VS.71).aspx>

[9] F. Schmied and A. Cyment. Whitepaper on Aspect-oriented weaving and the .NET common language runtime. IET Softw., Vol. 1, No. 6, December 2007

<http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ielx5/4124007/4435100/04435104.pdf?arnumber =4435104>

T

HANK YOU