How to create a simple Spring Boot project in start.spring.io

This series is my attempt to help share what I know ref spring boot and code some practical use cases which might help others to learn and get hands on.

You have to know the following before you start creating your spring boot project.

Which version of java do you prefer or is supported in your environments
Is there a version of spring boot recommended by your organization or you can choose the latest stable one

Which build automation ( Maven or Gradle ) does your organization prefer to use?

What are the dependencies needed for your project? you will actually be able to get to know about your dependencies based on the architecture diagram or design for your project. Some of the questions to ask yourself are
Will you be exposing web services? REST or SOAP?
Will you need to connect to any database to store or retrieve data? like MySQL or Oracle DB or MongoDB or any other SQL or NoSQL database.
Do you want to use JDBC or JPA for working with databases
Do you have any security requirements? like Auth, spring security, LDAP etc.
Do you have any connectivity with queues like RabbitMQ, Kafka etc.
Do you need any specific cloud needs like Azure, AWS, GCP or Pivotal Cloud?
Do you have any specific logging requirements?
There are lot more categories of dependencies which you can explore yourself on the spring initializer website.
Now assuming we kind of have answered fairly all the above questions and don't need to worry if you missed out any dependencies, it can always be added in the later stage during development.