• Spring links objects together instead of the objects linking themselves together.
• Spring object linking is defined in XML files, allowing easy changes for different application configurations thus working as a plug in architecture.
• In an MVC architecture your controllers handle all requests.
• Spring uses a “DispatcherServlet” defined in the web.xml file to analyze a request URL pattern and then pass control to the correct Controller by using a URL mapping defined in a “spring bean” XML file. All frameworks integrate well with spring.
• Consistent Configuration, open plug-in architecture
• Integrates well with different O/R Mapping frameworks like Hibernate
• Easier to test applications  with.
• Less complicated than other framework. 
• Active user community.
• Spring is well organized and seems easier to learn comparatively
• Spring also supports JDBC Framework that makes it easier to create JDBC Apps.

Advantage of Spring MVC Framework

1. Predefined Templates
2. Loose Coupling
3. Easy to test
4. Lightweight
5. Fast Development
6. Declarative Support
7. Hibernate and JDBC Support
8. MVC Architecture and JavaBean Support

Features of Spring MVC Framework

1. Inversion of Control (IoC) Container

It is used to provide object reference to class during runtime.

2. Data Access Framework

It enables developers to easily write code to access the persistent data throughout the application.

3. Transaction Management

It enables developers to model a wide range of transaction by providing Java Transaction API (JTA).

4. Spring Web Services

It provides powerful mapping for transmitting incoming XML request to any object.

Features of Spring 3.0:

• Spring 3.0 framework supports Java 5. It provides annotation based configuration support. Java 5 features such as generics, annotations, varargs etc can be used in Spring.
• A new expression language Spring Expression Language SpEL is being introduced. The Spring Expression Language can be used while defining the XML and Annotation based bean definition.
• Spring 0 framework supports REST web services.
• Data formatting can never be so Spring 3.0 supports annotation based formatting. We can now use            the              @DateFimeFormat(iso=ISO.DATE) and @NumberFormat(style=Style.CURRENCY) annotations to convert the date and currency formats.
• Spring 3.0 has started support to JPA 2.0.