Welcome to the Ranch.
The Spring XML configuration uses
XML namespaces, which is good practice when you use XML. It allows tools like your
IDE to understand what the XML means and check it against an XML Schema (XSD).
If you want to compare it to
Java, namespaces are a little bit similar to packages in Java. And just like when you write a program in Java it's always a good idea to put your classes in a package, it's always a good idea to use namespaces when you work with XML.