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

► A means for resolving text messages, including support for internationalization.

► A generic way to load file resources.

► Events to beans that are registered as listeners.