title: Spring multiple application contexts vs single application context in an ear
body: <p>I have inherited an app which is packaged as ear file that has inside</p>
  
  <pre><code> - ear :
          -APP-INF/lib (persitence.jar - hibernate+spring ... etc)
          -war (web-services)
          -jar (mdb)
          -jar (mdb)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>As I studied the app noticed that each module has inside the jar creates it's own Spring application context that is loaded on runtime.</p>
  
  <p>It works ok but it would not be better to have only one application context ? 
   I wonder what are the benefits and drawback which this structure compared to the one where it is only an single application context used ?</p>
  
  <p>To be more clear on runtime there are 3 application context roots loaded.It is not only that there are more application context files</p>
  
  <p>Thanks</p>