Most of the XML declarations are similar between Spring and Blueprint. Using the Spring namespace mechanism, the same configuration can contain both Spring, Spring DM, Blueprint and other namespaces. Moreover, custom elements can be used for virtually all elements of a Spring configuration (namespace, bean declaration, decoration, etc...). The table below focuses only on the usual, standard Spring namespaces and their Blueprint equivalent.

The configurations below are equivalent in terms of functionality:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<blueprint xmlns="http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0" default-activation="lazy">
    <bean id="object" class="java.lang.Object"/>
    
    <bean id="length" class="java.lang.Integer">
        <argument value="4"/>
    </bean>
    
    <bean id="buffer" class="java.lang.StringBuffer" depends-on="simple">
    	<property name="length" ref="length"/>
    </bean>
    
    <bean id="current-time" class="java.lang.System" factory-method="currentTimeMillis" scope="prototype"/>
    
    <bean id="list" class="java.util.ArrayList" destroy-method="clear" activation="eager">
    	<argument ref="length"/>
    </bean>
</blueprint>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd"
    default-lazy-init="true">
    
    <bean id="object" class="java.lang.Object"/>
    
    <bean id="length" class="java.lang.Integer">
        <constructor-arg value="4"/>
    </bean>
    
    <bean id="buffer" class="java.lang.StringBuffer" depends-on="simple">
    	<property name="length" ref="length"/>
    </bean>
    
    <bean id="current-time" class="java.lang.System" factory-method="currentTimeMillis" scope="prototype"/>
    
    <bean id="list" class="java.util.ArrayList" destroy-method="clear" lazy-init="false">
    	<constructor-arg ref="length"/>
    </bean>
</beans>

As mentioned before, in Spring DM one can mix and match the namespaces:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xmlns:bp="http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0"
	xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
	xmlns:osgi="http://www.springframework.org/schema/osgi"
	xmlns:task="http://www.springframework.org/schema/task"
	xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
	xsi:schemaLocation="
		http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0 http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0/blueprint.xsd
		http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
		http://www.springframework.org/schema/osgi http://www.springframework.org/schema/osgi/spring-osgi.xsd
		http://www.springframework.org/schema/task http://www.springframework.org/schema/task/spring-task.xsd		
		http://www.springframework.org/schema/util http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util.xsd">
    
    <util:constant id="thread-priority" static-field="java.lang.Thread.MIN_PRIORITY"/>
    
    <bean id="exampleThread" class="java.lang.Thread" p:priority-ref="thread-priority">
    	<constructor-arg>
    	   <bp:bean class="org.example.SomeRunnable"/>
    	</constructor-arg>
    </bean>
    
    <task:executor id="rangeWithBoundedQueue" size="7-42" queue-capacity="#{ T(java.lang.Math).random() * 30.0 }"/>

    <bp:reference-list id="cloneableServices" interface="java.lang.Cloneable" />
<beans>

The example above, uses the Spring beans, util, p, Spring Expression Language (SpEL) and the task namespace introduced in Spring 3.x, and Spring DM namespace.

From a container perspective, the Blueprint spec standardizes the a subset of the Spring container. A high-level view comparison, by no means comprehensive, is summarized in the table below:

As with the XML configuration, since Spring DM translates the Blueprint configuration into Spring metadata, one can rely on Spring for features beyond the Blueprint container. For example, one can configure a bean using Blueprint and use annotation on the same instance, for field injection. The same object can implement Spring's Aware interfaces or rely on other post processors for certain behaviour.