What is Spring Roo?
Spring Roo is an open-source rapid application development tool that streamlines building Java-based web applications using the Spring Framework. It provides automation, generation of boilerplate code, and runtime scaffolding using domain-specific commands, making development easier and faster.
Some key features of Spring Roo include:
- Automatic generation of data models, repositories, controllers, tests, and views based on domain classes
- Runtime scaffolding to add new features and functionality quickly
- Database schema generation and evolution as the application changes
- Supports SQL, NoSQL and advanced data stores like Gemfire and MongoDB
- Integrated search capabilities using Compass or Hibernate Search
- Aspext-oriented programming support through Spring and AspectJ
- Build automation using Maven or Gradle
- Developer productivity enhancements like auto-complete, logging and add-ons
Spring Roo helps developers avoid repetitive coding through automation. It follows convention-over-configuration principles and promotes best practices out-of-the-box. The goal is to let developers focus on business logic rather than infrastructure.
It has an extensible architecture based on OSGi and Spring DM Server runtimes. Community add-ons provide additional functionality. Roo projects can leverage the broader Spring ecosystem seamlessly.
Overall, Spring Roo accelerates Java enterprise application development by an order of magnitude, making Java more productive as a rapid application development platform.
IntelliJ IDEA, Apache NetBeans, Eclipse, jHipster, Vaadin Framework, OpenJDK, Play!, Celerio, Telosys, Bootify.io, Grails, Oracle JDeveloper are some alternatives to Spring Roo.