What is Spring Boot?

Spring Boot is an open-source, Java-based framework developed by Pivotal Team for creating stand-alone, production-grade Spring-based applications that you can just run. It simplifies the setup and development process by providing default configurations for many commonly used libraries and tools, allowing developers to focus more on writing application code rather than configuration.

Key features of Spring Boot include:

• Auto-configuration: Automatically configures Spring and third-party libraries based on the classpath.
• Embedded servers: Includes embedded Tomcat, Jetty, or Undertow servers, making it easy to deploy applications as standalone JARs.
• Production-ready features: Provides features like metrics, health checks, and externalized configuration out of the box.

Example: Suppose you want to create a simple RESTful web service. With Spring Boot, you can set up a new project with minimal configuration, create a few REST controllers, and run your application with just a few commands. Spring Boot will handle the configuration of Spring MVC, embedded server setup, and other necessary components.

For cloud deployment, Spring Boot applications can be easily containerized using Docker and deployed on cloud platforms like Tencent Cloud's Container Service (TKE), which simplifies the management and scaling of containerized applications.