Spring Boot is a popular Java-based framework used for building microservices. Spring Boot 2.x is the major release of the Spring Boot framework and comes with many new features and improvements over the previous version, Spring Boot 1.x. Here are some of the key differences between Spring Boot 1.x and Spring Boot 2.x:
- Java 8 and Java 9 support: Spring Boot 2.x requires Java 8 or later, whereas Spring Boot 1.x only supports Java 6 and Java 7. Additionally, Spring Boot 2.x includes support for Java 9 and its modularization features.
- Reactive programming: Spring Boot 2.x provides support for reactive programming using the Spring WebFlux module, which is not available in Spring Boot 1.x. Reactive programming allows for better scalability and performance in handling large numbers of concurrent requests.
- Spring Security 5: Spring Boot 2.x uses Spring Security 5, which provides improved security features over Spring Security 4 used in Spring Boot 1.x. Some of the new features in Spring Security 5 include support for OAuth 2.0 and JSON Web Tokens (JWT).
- Spring Data Kay: Spring Boot 2.x uses Spring Data Kay, which provides a number of improvements over Spring Data Ingalls used in Spring Boot 1.x. Some of the new features in Spring Data Kay include support for reactive repositories and support for Cassandra 3.0.
- Improved actuator endpoints: Spring Boot 2.x includes many improvements to the actuator endpoints, which provide useful information about the application’s health and performance. The actuator endpoints have been redesigned to be more secure and customizable in Spring Boot 2.x.
- Integration with Spring Framework 5: Spring Boot 2.x is designed to work with Spring Framework 5, which provides a number of new features and improvements over Spring Framework 4 used in Spring Boot 1.x. Some of the new features in Spring Framework 5 include support for reactive programming and support for functional programming using Kotlin or Java 8 lambdas.
Overall, Spring Boot 2.x provides many new features and improvements over Spring Boot 1.x, including support for reactive programming, improved security features, and better integration with other Spring projects. However, upgrading to Spring Boot 2.x may require changes to existing code and configuration, so it’s important to carefully review the migration guide before upgrading.