This book is almost identical to the Spring developer's guide available on the web site. They follow the same chapters and format, and provide little new information, maybe some code. But once you start to get into Spring and use it, you'll want a reference that is more in depth. With this book, you'll find yourself struggling to find the details by browsing google and javadocs all day. Pro Spring is a better book that gives you more insight into how Spring works. My background is providing a services interface layer for a J2EE portal. I'm not developing the MVC so I didn't pay attention to those parts of the book.