Written in an informal, even confessional manner, this guide to the simple open source framework that has supplanted many more commercially viable but twitchy programs includes a wide variety of samples and examples, an online chapter, and room for your own notes on each page. It starts with building two classes with a dependency and then using dependency injection, which is a practical (to put it mildly) first step, then progresses to automation, injecting dependencies with Spring, and writing a test. The next step is to build a user interface, which follows, and integrating other clients, using the 3DBC, working with OR persistence (for example, in integrating iBATIS, using Spring with IDO, or even using Hibernate with Spring, services and AOP, transactions and security (including securing application servlets), messaging and remoting. The notebook closes with advice on building rich clients, which presumably should include yourself.