A bean factory is fine to easy applications, but to take benefit of the full power of the Spring framework, you may require to move up to Springs more advanced container, the application context. On the surface, an application context is similar as a bean factory. Both load bean definitions, wire beans together, and dispense beans upon request. But it also gives:

? A means for resolving text messages, as well as support for internationalization.

? A generic way to load file resources.

? Events to beans that are registered as listeners.