If you have not started using Java-based configuration in your Spring projects you really should take a look at it since it is a very valuable tool to master. Java-based configuration has been supported right out of the box since Spring 3.0 so it has become quite complete by now. (with the stable release being 3.2.x at the time of writing this post)
Personally, I have found that I hardly ever use any XML configuration files in Spring projects that I create nowadays. And as a side note, if I am also able to use an application server that supports Servlet 3.0 I can even get rid of my web.xml file. Thus eliminating a big part of the XML-based configuration usually needed.
Ok, but why? You might ask. Well, if you think about it there are a lot of benefits of having your configuration in code instead of in XML.
