Can I replace a Spring bean definition at runtime?

Question

Consider the following scenario. I have a Spring application context with a bean whose properties should be configurable, think DataSource or MailSender

Answer 1

Here is the nice idea of writing your own PlaceholderConfigurer that tracks the usage of properties and changes them whenever a configuration change occurs. This has two disadvantages, though:

1. It does not work with constructor injection of property values.
2. You can get race conditions if the reconfigured bean receives a changed configuration while it is processing some stuff.