Difference Between Spring Cloud and Spring Boot
- Spring Boot: A framework that simplifies the development of standalone, production-grade Spring-based applications by providing auto-configuration and pre-built settings.
- Spring Cloud: A set of tools built on top of Spring Boot that helps in developing distributed systems, specifically microservices, by addressing the challenges of service discovery, load balancing, configuration management, and more.
Key Comparison Points
1. Configuration:
- Spring Boot: Provides internal configuration for fast development.
- Spring Cloud: Manages external configuration across multiple services using tools like Spring Cloud Config.
2. Service Discovery:
- Spring Boot: Does not provide built-in service discovery.
- Spring Cloud: Offers service discovery via tools like Eureka, enabling dynamic discovery and registration of services.
3. Distributed Features:
- Spring Boot: Focuses on developing individual applications but lacks distributed system management features.
- Spring Cloud: Adds distributed system capabilities, like load balancing, circuit breakers (e.g., Hystrix, Resilience4j), and distributed tracing (e.g., Sleuth).
4. Deployment:
- Spring Boot: Ideal for developing self-contained applications or microservices that can be deployed on a single server or simple environments.
- Spring Cloud: Used for managing complex distributed systems across cloud environments with features like dynamic scaling and monitoring.
Conclusion
In summary, Spring Boot simplifies the creation of individual microservices, while Spring Cloud provides the tools needed to manage, scale, and secure microservices in a distributed environment, particularly in the cloud. They complement each other, with Spring Cloud building on top of Spring Boot to support more complex systems.