1.6. Convention over Configuration

The key design principle that makes Seam so easy to use is convention over configuration, also called configuration by exception. The idea is to have a set of common-sense default behaviors for the components (i.e., the convention). The developer needs to configure the component explicitly only when the desired behavior is not the default. For instance, when Seam injects component A as a property of component B, the Seam name of component A defaults to the recipient property name in component B. Many little things like that are true in Seam. Overall, the configuration metadata in Seam is much simpler than in competing Java frameworks. As a result, most Seam applications can be adequately configured with a small number of simple Java annotations. Developers benefit from reduced complexity and, in the end, fewer lines of code for the same functionality compared to competing frameworks.