Explain the purpose and usage of the @Repository annotation in Spring.

The @Repository annotation in Spring is used to designate a class as a component responsible for working with a database or other data storage mechanism.

Main purposes:

• Marks the class as a data access component so that Spring can automatically detect and register it in the application context.
• Allows Spring to handle database-related exceptions by translating them into unified Spring DataAccessException exceptions.

Example of usage:

@Repository
public class UserRepository {
    // methods for working with the database
}

Thus, @Repository helps organize the data access layer and integrate it with the Spring infrastructure.