Spring Framework – XML vs. Annotations

This question has been around for many years since Spring started to move heavily towards Annotation based configurations (if I recall, it’s called configuration by convention). Annotations based configurations were like a jungle fire that spread across the industry and very soon it was the norm. But, this question “XML vs. Annotations” always existed.

I for one have been around the Spring world since version 1.1 when annotations weren’t a thing. I know how write XML and I know how to configure an application to suit my needs. Since then, whenever I write an application in Spring, I have asked myself "XML or Annotations" and I never really had a good answer until recently. While you will find tons of posts around this topic in Google,  when you search for this, only a few really give you an unbiased opinion.

I started to work on an application that needs some very flexible configuration options and before I dive into that I had to make this decision yet again, and this time I wanted to keep things simple and my rationale was…

• Use Annotations in anything that is stable and defines the core structure of the application. Anything that would need a code change is okay to sit as an annotation.

Use XML based configurations when you know you may have a need to alter the behavior of an application without the need of compiling and deploying the code all over again.

This is how simple I kept it for my team. Once this principle is defined, job is only halve done. But we will get there soon.