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Use of Bean configuration XML File

I am a new user of Spring framework. I am facing some confusion in understanding the difference between core spring framework and spring boot. As far as I understand, Spring boot is a framework which performs the initial setup automatically (like Setting up Maven dependencies and downloading the jar files) and comes with an embedded Tomcat server which makes it ready to deploy in just one click., Whereas, Spring MVC requires manual setup. All the tutorials that I watched for core spring show bean configuration using bean factory which configures the beans using a .XML file. In Spring boot, this bean configuration file is absent. My question is, what is the use of this bean configuration file? I did not find any legitimate use of this file in making a REST service with spring. I didn't see any use of the Application Context, Bean Factory in creating web application. Can someone point out how can bean factory be used in Spring web apps? Is there any fundamental difference between core spring and spring boot other than the additional components?

The Spring application context is essentially the "pool" of beans (service objects, which include controllers, converters, data-access objects, and so on) and related information that define an application; I recommend the reference introduction. In theory, you can get complicated with the context setup and have hierarchical organization and such, but in most real-world cases you just have a single plain context.
Inside this context you need to install all of the beans that provide the logic for your application. There are several possible ways to do this, but the two main ways are by providing XML files with have directives like bean (define an individual bean) or component-scan (automatically search for classes with certain annotations, including #Controller) and by using Java classes annotated with #Configuration, which can use annotations and #Bean methods.
The XML style is generally older, and newer applications mostly use Java configuration, but both provide entries that are collected into the context, and you can use both simultaneously. However, in any application, you have to provide some way of getting the registration started, and you will typically have one "root" XML file or configuration class that then imports other XML files and/or configuration classes. In a legacy web.xml-based application, you specify this in your servlet configuration file.
Spring Boot is, as you said, essentially a collection of ready-to-go configuration classes along with a mechanism for automatically detecting configurations and activating them. Even this requires a configuration root, though! This is the #EnableAutoConfiguration instruction, frequently used through its composite #SpringBootApplication. The application context and configuration mechanisms work normally once Boot finds them and pulls them in. Spring knows where to get started because you give it an explicit instruction to build a context starting with that entry point, usually with SpringApplication.run(MyApplication.class, args).
The embedded-server configuration just happens to be a particular set of configuration that is really useful and comes with one of the Boot starter packages. There's nothing there that you couldn't do in a non-Boot application.

Pass a TOML configuration field to a Spring KafkaListener Annotation

I have a toml file being used to configure an application that uses Spring framework's KafkaListener annotation with the following signature:
#KafkaListener(id = "id0", topics = "some.hard.coded.topic.name")
I have a configuration manager class that reads a TOML file and configures various application settings based on the environment the app is running in. One of these is the topic to listen to. However, I do not know how I can pass this in to the Kafka Listener annotation. My understanding is that this can be done using SPEL in conjunction with yml files but I'm kind of locked in to using TOML here. Can anyone advise?

The topics property of the #KafkaListener indeed supports a SpEL including BeanFactory access, so if you have some bean which reads that TOML file and represents it as some set of runtime properties, e.g. getters, then you definitely can get a gain of the SpEL there. For example:
topics = "#{myTomlService.getTopic()}"
where myTomlService is a bean name for the mentioned service.

Spring Boot: Determining what autoconfiguration are applied to jersey?

Following the online docs for adding jersey to Sring boot, it appears I just need to include the following package
spring-boot-starter-jersey
Actually, it states that Spring Boot provides automatic configuration by including this package.
Where can I find out what exactly is happening?
If I don't add this package then what is NOT configured?
I tried searching for the package in google but got no specific explanation only saying that it automatically configures, but configures what?
I would like to know a little more of what is happening behind the scenes.

All of the auto-configuration code for all that Spring Boot supports is in the spring-boot-autoconfigure module. If you look through the packages, you will see a jersey package.
The "starter" modules generally do not have any code (of course unless it is a third-party module). How it works is that the code in the auto-configuration has some annotations that are #ConditionalOnXxx, where the condition be anything from a class being on the classpath. If this class is not available, then the auto-configuration will not take place. That's pretty much all adding the jersey starter module does: it adds the jersey dependencies so that the auto-configurer will applied.
Now what exactly is being auto-configured specifically for Jersey? Check out the source for the JerseyAutoConfiguration. Basically what you are going to see is your ResourceConfig being injected into the configurer. From that ResourceConfig, it creates Jersey's ServletContainer (which is the main entry point for Jersey.
Then, depending on our properties configuration, either a FilterRegistrationBean or a ServletRegistrationBean is created as a Spring bean, wrapping Jersey's ServletContainer. Jersey can be created as a Servlet or a Servlet Filter. Whichever one we configure we be used.
And that's it for the Jersey configuration. Spring Boot will get a servlet container (e.g. Tomcat, Jetty) from some other auto-configuration, and take the Filter/ServletRegistrationBean and add the Servlet/Filter to that servlet container.
Also, not really that important, but the auto-configuration also give us some Jackson configuration helpers. For example, instead of configuring our own ContextResolver, we can just configure an ObjectMapper Spring bean.
That's really all you get. It's nothing so spectacular that you couldn't just do it yourself without depending on the auto-configuration.

I would recommend learning a little more about how Spring Boot works to provide the automatic configuration in general.
A good reference is the spring boot reference guide. http://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/1.5.3.RELEASE/reference/htmlsingle/#common-application-properties
You can look at the common application properties in appendix A to see what all spring allows you to configure out of the box.
The Reference guide also gives a high level of what "spring-boot-starter-jersey" if you search for it on the page.
They also have a few samples that you can go through and debug to follow along if that is a way for you to learn.
Hope that gives you a starting point for learning!

How is Spring Container created?

I am studying for the Spring Core certification and I have following doubt about this question:
What is meant by “container” and how do you create one?
I know that the Spring container is at the core of the Spring Framework. The container will create the objects, wire them together, configure them, and manage their complete lifecycle from creation till destruction. The Spring container uses dependency injection (DI) to manage the components that make up an application. These objects are called Spring Beans which we will discuss in next chapter.
And I know that there exist 2 containers:
Spring BeanFactory Container: This is the simplest container providing basic support for DI and defined by the org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanFactory interface. The BeanFactory and related interfaces, such as BeanFactoryAware, InitializingBean, DisposableBean, are still present in Spring for the purposes of backward compatibility with the large number of third-party frameworks that integrate with Spring.
Spring ApplicationContext Container: This container adds more enterprise-specific functionality such as the ability to resolve textual messages from a properties file and the ability to publish application events to interested event listeners. This container is defined by the org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext interface.
Ok...this is pretty clear for me but what is the correct answer about How to create a container?
I think that it is automatically created by the Spring when it reads the configuration class or the XML configuration file.
Or not? What am I missing?

In short, "The Container" is a Spring instance in charge of managing the lifecycle of your beans.
To create one, basically, you should do something like
ApplicationContext applicationContext = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("/application-context.xml");
Remember replacing /application-context.xml by the file where you define your own Spring beans.
Take a look at http://www.springbyexample.org/examples/intro-to-ioc-creating-a-spring-application.html
You could also substitute the xml by a configuration class. On that case you should have something like this:
#Configuration
public class Myconfig{
#Bean
public MyBean myBean(){
return new MyBean();
}
}
For this, take a look at http://www.tutorialspoint.com/spring/spring_java_based_configuration.htm

java config for SpringBeanAutowiringInterceptor in an MDB

I am trying to expose an MDB interface for an existing jaxws service. The jaxws implementation is wired using Spring's java configuration and I would like to reuse that for the MDB as well, injecting a delegate into the MDB that will be called from onMessage().
I am trying to use the SpringBeanAutowiringInterceptor as per the documentation.
http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.1.x/spring-framework-reference/html/ejb.html#ejb-implementation-ejb3
But the documentation referes only to the XML configuration. There is a mention of an option to override the getBeanFactory() but no details are given.
Is there a way to use Spring's java configuration (#Configuration) with the SpringBeanAutowiringInterceptor?
Thanks.

Ended up packaging the the MDB inside the WAR along with the web service as documented at http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v8r5/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.websphere.base.doc/ae/cejb_ejbinwar.html.