The test was written to test the non-recommended, fully integrated scenario since there is nothing preventing a user from also defining GemFire object/components inside cache.xml too.  

Because I enhanced the "Wiring Declarable components" support in SDG with the LazyWiringDeclarableSupport class (which, BTW needs to be documented in the Ref Guide yet for this topic branch), I wanted to assert that any GemFire object/component declared in cache.xml, which would be created by GemFire prior to bootstrapping, configuring and initializing the Spring container and context, also gets wired properly (the chicken-and-egg problem).  That is the main reason for demonstrating and testing the creation of a Region in cache.xml, was to define a CacheLoader that expected a dependency (DataSource bean) from the Spring context.

I will certainly state and emphasis our recommended approach in the documentation, showcasing examples appropriately.  However, in order to discuss the LazyWiringDeclarableSupport class, I need to demonstrate the later too.