Spring Boot Vocabulary

name: Spring Boot Vocabulary
description: Domain vocabulary and taxonomy for Spring Boot framework concepts, APIs, and developer terminology.
version: "3.3.0"
created: "2026-05-02"
modified: "2026-05-02"
url: https://spring.io/projects/spring-boot

terms:

  - term: Actuator
    definition: >-
      A Spring Boot module that provides production-ready management and monitoring endpoints.
      Exposes operational information about the running application (health, metrics, info,
      dump, env) via HTTP or JMX.
    category: Module
    tags:
      - Monitoring
      - Management
      - Operations

  - term: Auto-Configuration
    definition: >-
      Spring Boot's mechanism for automatically configuring Spring applications based on
      jar dependencies on the classpath. Uses @EnableAutoConfiguration and conditional
      annotations to apply configuration only when specific beans or classes are present.
    category: Core Concept
    tags:
      - Configuration
      - Convention Over Configuration

  - term: Starter
    definition: >-
      Convenient dependency descriptors that include all the required dependencies for
      a specific technology. For example, spring-boot-starter-web includes Spring MVC,
      Tomcat, and Jackson without requiring individual dependency management.
    category: Dependency Management
    tags:
      - Maven
      - Gradle
      - Dependencies

  - term: Embedded Server
    definition: >-
      A servlet container (Tomcat, Jetty, or Undertow) bundled inside the application
      JAR, enabling standalone deployment without an external application server.
    category: Deployment
    tags:
      - Tomcat
      - Jetty
      - Undertow
      - JAR

  - term: Health Indicator
    definition: >-
      A component implementing HealthIndicator that contributes to the overall application
      health status. Built-in indicators exist for database, disk space, Redis, RabbitMQ,
      and more. Custom indicators can be added by implementing the interface.
    category: Actuator
    tags:
      - Health Check
      - Monitoring

  - term: Micrometer
    definition: >-
      A vendor-neutral application metrics facade used by Spring Boot Actuator. Supports
      multiple monitoring systems (Prometheus, Datadog, New Relic, CloudWatch) using a
      consistent API for counters, gauges, timers, and distribution summaries.
    category: Observability
    tags:
      - Metrics
      - Prometheus
      - Observability

  - term: Profile
    definition: >-
      A named logical grouping of bean definitions and configuration properties that are
      active only when the specified profile is active. Enables different configurations
      for development, testing, staging, and production environments.
    category: Configuration
    tags:
      - Environment
      - Configuration

  - term: ConfigurationProperties
    definition: >-
      A Spring Boot annotation that binds external configuration properties (from application.yml
      or environment variables) to a typed Java object with validation support.
    category: Configuration
    tags:
      - Binding
      - Type-Safe Configuration

  - term: Spring Initializr
    definition: >-
      A web-based project generator at start.spring.io that creates Spring Boot project
      skeletons with the selected dependencies, build tool, language, and Spring Boot version.
    category: Developer Tooling
    tags:
      - Project Bootstrap
      - Maven
      - Gradle

  - term: DevTools
    definition: >-
      Spring Boot Developer Tools (spring-boot-devtools) providing automatic application
      restart on classpath changes, LiveReload browser refresh, and relaxed property
      defaults for development.
    category: Developer Tooling
    tags:
      - Hot Reload
      - Development

  - term: Executable JAR
    definition: >-
      A Spring Boot application packaged as a single runnable JAR file (fat JAR or uber JAR)
      containing all dependencies, making deployment as simple as java -jar app.jar.
    category: Deployment
    tags:
      - Packaging
      - Deployment
      - Fat JAR

  - term: Spring Application
    definition: >-
      The SpringApplication class that bootstraps a Spring application from a main() method,
      creating the ApplicationContext, registering beans, and triggering auto-configuration.
    category: Core Concept
    tags:
      - Bootstrap
      - Application Context

  - term: GraalVM Native Image
    definition: >-
      Spring Boot's support for compiling applications to native executables using GraalVM,
      resulting in faster startup times and lower memory consumption compared to JVM deployments.
    category: Deployment
    tags:
      - GraalVM
      - Native
      - Performance