Here are the questions resulted from reading the Spring Reference, please help.
(1) Do I ever need manual creation of ApplicationContext? Do I ever need second instance of AplicationContext?
(2) We have the following config instructions:
<context:annotation-config/>
<context:component-scan base-package=".."/>
<mvc:annotation-driven/>
Do these instructions duplicate theirselfs? In which cases yes, in which no?
(3) I am a bit stuck with all that ways Spring introduces to convert from string to object: PropertyEditor, Conversions, Formatting.. Here is a simple use case: I have a Spring MVC controller that processes some POST request. That request is a result of filling some form. The form is a web representation of some entity. So, given a the user submits a new Project form. In that form exist a date field and a manager's name field to be selected from the list of existing managers. The entered date should be converted to Date property of Project object, and manager's name - to Manager property, created or located by this name (i.e. I want to inject Manager into his Project). What should I use in this case? Property editors, formatters, something else?
(4) Generally, may I say that all the @interface classes that are found on classpath can be used by Spring as annotations? In other words, how can I know which annotations can be used in my project? All that can be found in my classpath, or I need to register them somehow?
(5) I tried to use spring aop without aspectj.jar: just created an Aspect and addred XML definition for this aspect (without any annotations). As a result it throws "class not found Exception: org/aspectj/weaver/BCException". So looks like I cannot use Spring AOP without aspectJ library?