If you've worked with data access in Java and especially with Spring Data for a while, then you are familiar with various Query and Update programming models. You write data access code. You refactor a property name. You run your tests. They fail. Your query strings? Still pointing to the old property name because strings don't refactor.

Sort.by("firstName", "lastName");

where("address.country").is(…);

Query construction often involves referencing domain properties by strings, whether for predicates, sorting, or path navigation. This approach is simple and intentionally lightweight. It…

Hi Spring fans! In this installment I sit down with DevOps legend and industry analyst extraordinaire John Willis and talk about his new book Rebels of Reason: The Long Road from Aristotle to ChatGPT and AI's Heroes Who Kept the Faith, and talk about the nature of the ecosystem, AI, the role of the developer in this exciting new world, and so much more! #ai #springboot #developers #artificailintelligence

• get the book
• begin your AI journey with Spring AI

Spring Fruits Benchmark

Abstract

Benchmarks are tricky to do well, and the results are often hard to interpret. This analysis attempts to go beyond a simple headline number to explore how performance varies with data set size. The results show that while results might be disappointing for a given data set size, the performance characteristics can change as the size changes, leading to different conclusions about scalability and efficiency. The result is a deeper insight into how a framework handles increasing loads and the factors that influence performance.

For a data set size N, the cycle time (inverse throughput) is linear in N, so t = A + B*N, with A a baseline framework cost per HTTP request, and B the processing time per data item. We measure A and B for a simple endpoint that fetches and renders a complete data set in JSON. A is small (on the order of tens of microseconds). Probably for a "real" application (not just CRUD) the processing time B…

Hi, Spring fans! Welcome to another awesome (and oh-so-agentic) week in Spring! We've got a ton to look into, and I've got even more to prepare for next week's DevNexus event in Atlanta, GA, so let's dive right into it! (Be sure to say "hi" if you're going to be there, though!)

• You've heard of Agent Skills before, right? The new thing announced about a month ago by Anthropic as a way to conditionally add knowledge about your expectations for workflows, processes, conventions, etc.? Well, good news! In this video, DaShaun Carter, James Ward, and I look at the amazing support for building Agent Skills (.md) with Spring AI and--- you heard it here first! ---the new SkillsJars project!
• In this video, I look at some of my favorite features in the new Spring gRPC 1.0 release, going from .proto…

Hi, Spring fans! In this installment I talk to the amazing Glenn Renfro about Spring Batch, Spring Integration, Spring AI, and much more — plus why you should definitely register to attend the amazing Devnexus event in Atlanta, GA!

Hi, Spring fans! Welcome to another rip-roaring installment of This Week in Spring! It's Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year for billions of people around the world and to those who celebrate, Happy Chinese/Lunar New Year (新年快乐)! Or Happy Spring Festival (春节快乐)! (My favorite kind of festival!)

In honor of the auspicious day, I asked the AI to generate an image of the fire horse, and it did not disappoint!

Awesome!

You know what else is awesome? So much amazing content from the community this week, so let's dive right into it!

• Nice! An article on using Spring AI on Baeldung.
• This is awesome! A micro-optimization discovered in OpenJDK that, for some (admittedly uncommon) use cases, results in 400x performance improvements.
• Speaking of performance! Did you see this MCP server performance benchmark? Spring AI crushed it! Our performance and transactions-per-second numbers were the best among similar implementations in Python…

Hi, Spring fans! I've been waiting for this episode for so long! Today, we're finally joined by my friend Richard Fichtner, who so took pity on my plight waiting for music to be added to the GraalVM that his company, XDev Software, created the music-maven-plugin, the best Maven plugin, ever! This episode was recorded live at the amazing JFokus 2026 event!

Hi, Spring fans! Welcome to another installment of This Week in Spring! It's February 10th, 2026, as I write this from lovely London, UK. I spoke at the local Java User Group here last night, had a wonderful time. Tomorrow, I'm going home. It's been fun, but it's time to conclude this roller coaster whirlwind tour of Toronto, Canada; Helsinki, Finland; Stockholm, Sweden; Istanbul, Turkey; and London, UK.

I've been busy, but as usual, the community's been busier! There's a ton to get into so let's dive right into it!

• I did a video on how to build production-worthy AI systems and services with Spring AI. In it we look at most of what you need to know from Spring AI and we look at how to make it production worthy with observability, scalability, and - very importantly - security. Yes, security! We look at the new experimental Spring AI Community project called MCP Security which we can use to, you guessed it, secure MCP endpoints (in this case, with OAuth).
• another very interesting effort from our pal Thomas Vitale. It's called Docling, and it's a tool to prepare documents for AI (using Spring AI, natch)
• why AI feel hard …

hi, Spring fans! In this installment I have the privilege of talking to JetBrains legend Marco Behler