Spring slow performance at "Web Framework Benchmarks" website

Question

It looks like the performance of Spring (Boot) is relatively low compare to other frameworks at "Web Framework Benchmarks" website Web Framework Benchmarks. I looked at the source code (JSON serialization) and could not find anything odd. So I am wondering whether the low performance is caused by Tomcat or by the framework itself?

Answer 1

Slow? It seems to be more or less in the middle of the ranks. Which doesn't seem too bad considering that it is actually a framework. The definition of framework for that set of benchmarks is very liberal, given that it includes benchmarks for a pretty raw Undertow application and another for a raw Servlet.

But given that the Spring benchmark itself is running on Undertow, it wouldn't be Tomcat causing the issue. :)

Looking at the source for the various benchmarks, they are really not comparing like for like. For example, the Spring benchmark project builds a reasonably standard multi-tiered application with ORM entities mapped with JPA and Hibernate, re-usable repository classes, etc.

On the other hand the Wicket application just has a controller with a JDBC call. It even uses a hand-cranked template for generating JSON. You could write a Spring application that way if you wanted to, but nobody would be impressed.

The Undertow benchmark again does little more than query a database with JDBC and spit out a response. It's not surprising that it would be faster than itself with a full stack framework running on it.

Of course, they hopefully get you to think about your priorities in writing an application. Do you want a full stack framework, which lets you write less code, provides various security features, helps you to achieve code re-use, and make your application more testable and maintainable? Or are you willing to sacrifice all that for speed?