An ApplicationContext provides:

• Bean factory methods, inherited from ListableBeanFactory. This avoids the need for applications to use singletons.
• The ability to resolve messages, supporting internationalization. Inherited from the MessageSource interface.
• The ability to load file resources in a generic fashion. Inherited from the ResourceLoader interface.
• The ability to publish events. Implementations must provide a means of registering event listeners.
• Inheritance from a parent context. Definitions in a descendant context will always take priority. This means, for example, that a single parent context can be used by an entire web application, while each servlet has its own child context that is independent of that of any other servlet.

In addition to standard bean factory lifecycle capabilities, ApplicationContext implementations need to detect ApplicationContextAware beans and invoke the setApplicationContext method accordingly.