Welcome to another installment of This Week in Spring .

We are already almost done with January (which, honestly, shocks me. Where <EM>does</EM> the time go?)
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	<LI> Did you guys see last week's webinar introducing Spring 3.1 with Spring project lead, and VMWare/SpringSource Principal Engineer, Juergen Hoeller?  
       Last week's webinar was <EM>very</EM> well-attended, and represents the best turnout yet, by far, for all of the SpringSource webinars. So, thanks to all those who came, and, to the handful of people on earth that couldn't make it, don't worry! You can watch 

the Spring 3.1 webinar's recording on the SpringSource YouTube page.

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The next item is a video is one of my favorites. It's the second part of a two part talk that Ramnivas Laddad, Scott Andrews and Jennifer Hickey - all SpringSource heavyweights now also working on Cloud Foundry - gave at SpringOne 2GX 2011 on using Cloud Foundry with Spring. So, where is the first part? I'm not so sure. I hope InfoQ also got that video, as well, but either way this is a very useful video. And, they're a great testament to the value of the content created for SpringOne 2GX.

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	 <LI> <A href = "http://www.springsource.org/node/3377">The SpringSource Tool Suite, 2.9.0.M2, has been released</a>.  
		 This release of the <a href ="http://www.springsource.com/developer/sts">SpringSource Tool Suite</a> has many new features, including  
		 an  update to TcServer 2.6.3,  an update to Spring Roo 1.2.0 (and updated support for the new Spring Roo service arrangements  - repositories, services, etc.), an update to Grails 2.0.0 and   Groovy 1.8, and initial support for editing Gradle files. 
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	 <LI>  Google App Engine Product Manager Chris Ramsdale gave a great talk about <a href ="http://www.springsource.org/node/3373">using Spring on Google App Engine</a> for SpringOne2GX 2011. This a good talk, and also a strong testament to Spring's unique portability story.  </LI>
	
	
	<LI>A blogger, whose name I was not able to uncover, wrote up a <em>fantastic</EM> post on
		<a href = "http://www.insaneprogramming.be/?p=358">his first steps with Spring Integration 2.1</a>. In the blog's example, he talks a little about <CODE>channels</CODE>, the Spring Integration FTP and XML support, and then.. the blog's done! Because, Spring Integration's just that simple.  This is definitely worth a read.  I love that he came to Spring Integration in basically the same fashion as I - and numerous others - have: we'd used big, fat, horrid ESBs and wanted a leaner, cleaner, open-source (and, tangentially, Spring-friendly) alternative. Nice job, and welcome to the community.
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	<Li> 
			The   <a href = "http://www.springsource.org/spring-social">Spring Social</a> and <a href ="https://github.com/SpringSource/spring-social-twitter">Spring Social Twitter</a> 1.0.2 releases primarily <a href = "http://www.springsource.org/spring-social/news/1.0.2-released">fix bugs found since 1.0.1 and adds a few small enhancements</a>.
			
			The  <a href = "https://github.com/springsource/spring-social-linkedin">Spring Social LinkedIn</a> release includes API binding for LinkedIn's Group API, which completes the LinkedIn API binding. 
			The Spring Social LinkedIn binding's very mature, at this point, and the steady march towards 1.0 will start with a first RC, soon. 

			</li>	<LI> Last April, Spring project lead and SpringSource Principal Engineer Juergen Hoeller gave an interview to JSF Central's Kito D. Mann on   <a href = "http://www.jsfcentral.com/articles/hoeller-01-12.html">Spring 3.1, JSF, and more</a>. I'm not too sure why this podcast took so long to materialize, but it's here, and still fairly timely, almost a year later.  Enjoy. 

				</LI>		<LI> Our pals over at Chariot Solutions have posted a <EM>very</EM> comprehensive <a href = "http://blog.chariotsolutions.com/2012/01/spring-31-cool-new-features.html">roundup of the new features in Spring 3.1</a>.  As usual, they knock it out of the park. There's a reason these guys are great trainers...   </LI> 
			
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				Willie Wheeler followed up on the  <a href = "http://springinpractice.com/2012/01/17/spring-social-github-revisiting-github-integration/">nature of the contributions he'd made to Spring Social GitHub</a>, which we talked about here in this very column, last week. 
				
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		<LI> Tobias Trelle is back with the second installment of his exploration of Spring Data. This week, <a href = "http://blog.codecentric.de/en/2012/01/spring-data-jpa/">he's introducing Spring Data JPA</a>.   Definitely worth a read (and bookmark - he promises even more great stuff to come). Check it out! </LI>

	
	 <LI> Lots of people are taking the first, intrepid steps into the brave new world of Scala development and want to establish 
		good, reusable practices for working with Spring and Spring MVC with Scala. The <EM>Orange Apple</EM> blog  offers a 
		<a href = "http://www.orangeapple.org/post/15811593429/scala-based-spring-hibernate-wireframe-to-get-you?98ea0958">Scala-based Spring and Hibernate <EM>wireframe</EM> application to get you started</a>. This, the blogger (<EM><CODE>ykameshrao</CODE></EM>, on GitHub) volunteers, is <a href = "https://github.com/ykameshrao/scala-spring-hibernate-springmvc-maven-framework">his first open source</a> project, and   I think it's a wonderful one. <EM>Really</EM> nice work! Keep it up.
		
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			<LI>  
				The Monitis blog has some good tips on <a href = "http://blog.monitis.com/index.php/2012/01/24/using-tomcat-with-a-database-performance-optimization-tips/">optimizing database performance with Tomcat</a>. 

				an alignment of the  Servlet 3.0 implementation with the changes defined in the first maintenance release (also known as Rev. A.), 
			added support for connectors to automatically select a free port to bind to, and an update  to Commons Pool 1.5.7, Commons Daemon 1.0.8 and Eclipse JDT compiler 3.7.1.   </LI>
			 <LI> <A href  = "http://www.tomcatexpert.com">TomcatExpert.com</A> also has a great post that explains how to use the  new, highly concurrent connection pool that ships with Tomcat 7 (<CODE>org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory</CODE>) as a replacement for the Commons DBCP pool. 
				
				This is one handy, dandy pool! You only need to scroll down the page to see all the new, enterprise grade features supported. I'm personally excited to try it!
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		 <LI> In related news, <a href = "http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/changelog.html">Apache Tomcat 5.5.35 was just released</a>.  </Li> 



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