What is Scope in the context of beans and what types of Scope exist?

In the context of the Spring Framework, Scope (lifetime scope) defines the lifecycle and visibility of a bean (object) managed by the container.

Main types of Scope:

• singleton — one instance of the bean for the entire Spring container. This is the default value.
• prototype — each request to the container creates a new instance of the bean.
• request — the bean lives for the duration of a single HTTP request (used in web applications).
• session — the bean lives within the user's HTTP session.
• application — the bean lives within the ServletContext, i.e., at the level of the entire web application.
• websocket — the bean lives within a WebSocket session.

The choice of Scope depends on how long the object should exist and in what context it is used.