Johnson's first two books introduced readers to the concepts of the Spring Framework; this new book provides an in-depth tutorial showing how to use the complete set of Spring tools to build real J2EE and Java applications. The book describes common types of problems faced by Java developers and then shows how Spring can help solve them.

The book covers the complete specturm of Java development, including database access/persistence, container configuration, transaction management, remoting, and web MVC. It introduces well known techniques, like design patterns, to solve some of these problems as well as new and innovative approaches like Inversion of Control (IoC) and Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP). All solutions are implemented using the functions provided by the Spring Framework in conjunction with other popular open source technologies like Hibernate and Velocity.