This week the EclipseLink team announced the release of EclipseLink 1.0. I've been using EclipseLink on S2AP for a while now; in fact, I used EclipseLink when developing our JPA load-time-weaving support.

We've yet to upgrade our internal usage to 1.0 - our beta9 was tagged just before the announcement - but I wanted to demonstrate how effectively the pairing works in an OSGi environment.

EclipseLink in Petclinic

In the 1.2.0 version of the S2AP Petclinic sample, we released the EclipseLink implementation of the Clinic back-end. The back-end is a drop-in replacement for the JDBC back-end that was previously the only option.

Building Petclinic EclipseLink

To build the EclipseLink version of Petclinic, simply open a terminal window in the Petclinic root directory and run:

cd org.springframework.petclinic.eclipselink
ant collect-provided jar

	<p>
		This will create the Petclinic EclipseLink PAR file in  <span style="font-family:courier">org.springframework.petclinic.eclipselink/target/artifacts/org.springframework.petclinic.eclipselink.par</span> and will put all the required bundles in  <span style="font-family:courier">org.springframework.petclinic.eclipselink/target/par-provided/bundles/</span>.
	</p>
	<h2 id="running-petclinic-eclipselink">
		Running Petclinic EclipseLink
	</h2>
	<p>
		To run the Petclinic EclipseLink application, copy all the provided…

I am pleased to announce that Developing Rich Web Applications with Spring, a three-day bootcamp lead by SpringSource engineers on web application development, is now available.  This intense, hands-on workshop teaches how to apply the latest versions of Spring Web MVC, Spring Web Flow, Spring JavaScript, and Spring Faces to create rich web applications.  It compliments our flagship "Core Spring" course by focusing squarely on using Spring to solve problems facing Java web application developers.

• How to design and implement REST architectures with Spring Web MVC 2.5
• How to progressively enhance HTML pages and forms with Ajax behaviors using Spring JavaScript with the Dojo Toolkit
• How to design and implement linear progressions that carry out application transactions with Spring Web Flow 2
• How to implement web authentication and authorization models with Spring Security 2
• How to optimize object persistence and concurrency in a high-volume web application environment
• How to integrate JavaServerFaces component libraries into your application with Spring Faces
• User interface best practices in the areas of style, layout, and accessibility
• Testing strategies for all layers of a web application
• Techniques for optimizing web application performance

For more information and to register for an upcoming workshop, visit SpringSource.com.  I am very excited to be leading the first public bootcamp in Washington D.C on August 5th through 7th--I hope to see you there!

SpringSource is organizing its first dedicated seminar day in central Europe: the SpringSource Seminar Day in Linz, Austria, on September 8th, 2008. This is a full-day seminar about current hot topics in the Spring portfolio: a rare chance to hear about what's brand-new and upcoming right from the Spring project leads! The agenda is planned as follows:

8:30 ... Open for registration
9:30 ... Welcome and introduction (by Juergen Hoeller)
9:45 ... Keynote: The Spring Portfolio (by Rod Johnson and Adrian Colyer)
11:00 ... Introducing the SpringSource Application Platform (by Rob Harrop and Eberhard Wolff)
12:00 ... Lunch break (lunch buffet provided on site)
13:00 ... Tools for Enterprise Development and Management (by Christian Dupuis and Jennifer Hickey)
14:15 ... Developing Rich Web Applications with Spring (by Keith Donald and Agim Emruli)
15:15 ... Coffee break (coffee and cookies provided on site)
15:45 ... Spring Framework 3.0 – The Next Generation (by Juergen Hoeller and Mike Wiesner)
17:00 ... Spring.NET 1.2 (by Mark Pollack and Erich Eichinger)
18:00 ... Meet & Greet at the SpringSource booth (including drinks and snacks)
19:00 ... End of the seminar

UPDATE: SpringSource's CEO Rod Johnson now to co-present the seminar keynote with CTO Adrian Colyer! Also note that we are organizing a concluding Meet & Greet session at the SpringSource booth.

The speaker list includes SpringSource's CEO Rod Johnson, CTO Adrian Colyer as well as project leads Rob Harrop, Christian Dupuis, Jennifer Hickey, Keith Donald, Juergen Hoeller and Mark Pollack. This is your chance to get in touch with SpringSource's project leads and European consultants for first-hand insight into Spring. The presentation language will be English; the overall event will be moderated in English as well as German.

The seminar will be held at the beautiful Bergschloessl Linz and allows for convenient travelling on a day trip basis (e.g. from Vienna, Salzburg and Munich). Of course, you might prefer to stay for the weekend in order to visit the city of Linz, the European Capital of Culture 2009... Tip: The famous Linzer Klangwolke happens to be scheduled for Saturday, September 6th - the weekend right before the seminar!

Linz is easy to reach by car, train and plane. The main train station is close to the venue, with direct connections from e.g. Vienna, Wels, Salzburg, Nuremberg and Frankfurt. The Blue Danube Airport Linz (LNZ) - providing direct connections from Vienna, Frankfurt, Duesseldorf, Munich and Zurich - is a 20 minutes drive away.

The admission fee for this unique opportunity is EUR 150, to be paid on arrival at the venue. Advance registration before August 11th is required: please send an email to Eva Hoeller (eva.hoeller AT springsource DOT com), stating your contact details as well as the number of seats that you would like to reserve for your company. Seating is limited, so register early!

UPDATE: This seminar is booked out at the already extended level of 145 attendees. See you there!

Juergen Hoeller
VP & Distinguished Engineer
SpringSource

When Oracle acquired BEA systems, I and others noted the significance of the loss of the only independent Java middleware vendor. With Oracle's recent announcement of a price hike for their products, including WebLogic Server, this is no longer a theoretical issue. They have the oil, and they think they have existing customers over a barrel. The need for alternatives is now even more painfully clear.

In fairness, Oracle's move is partly driven by the weakness of the US dollar, but the increases in WebLogic pricing are far greater than those affecting other products.

Some applications previously priced at $3,995 are now listed at $4,595 -- up 13.1 percent -- while database software prices increased 18.75 percent from $40,000 to $47,500 per CPU. Other prices increased approximately 15 percent, according to Wang's report. The price for BEA's WebLogic application server is now $25,000 per CPU, up 47.1 percent from its $17,000-per-CPU price prior to Oracle's $6.7 billion acquisition of the middleware software vendor in April.

Some industry observers have worried that the acquisitions could give Oracle a near-monopoly in some markets. The Forrester report says the price increase for BEA WebLogic could reflect Oracle's dominant position in the application server market.

Fortunately, for customers…

In this article I will show you how to run a Spring Batch job in the SpringSource Application Platform. I ran an early version of this up as a little demo for JavaOne, and then again at the London Spring User Group, and thought it might be a good thing to share. The sample code is here.

The Bundles

Bundle: hsql-server

The bundle configuration is in META-INF/spring/module-context.xml (this is conventional for Platform bundles) - Spring DM picks up all XML files from META-INF/spring. This one just uses Spring to configure and launch an instance of the HSQL Server.

There is an integration test that can be used to check the…

As an open source software provider, we think we should be open about our strategy, too. We'd like to share how we got here, where we're going and why the journey will be good for Spring, good for Spring users and good for SpringSource.

Our History

It quickly became clear that others liked the ideas in that code - such as Dependency Injection and the Spring data access abstraction - and benefited from putting them into practice. I was approached by readers who requested that I publish the code and who wanted to contribute.

I quickly came to see some important benefits of open source.

• Most users get the functionality they need for free

    	<li> It…

After my talk on Spring Integration I've been getting quite some questions on clarification and samples. To meet the demand I will start a small series on implementing different integration patterns using Spring Integration. This first article will focus on the basics. It will show you how to get up and running and walk through one of the samples.

If you never heard about Spring Integration before it might be a good idea to familiarize yourself with it reading the introductory blog Mark Fisher wrote about it or by browsing the project website. In general

Let me start with a disclaimer: the…

InfoQ has a discussion thread summarizing the reactions to the announcement of the SpringSource Application Plaform. Michael Burke asked a great question on that thread which can be paraphrased as "forgetting the hype surrounding OSGi, what benefits can I expect to see if I port an application currently packaged as an EAR to OSGi bundles?".

I started answering this question on the InfoQ thread, but my answer was growing too long for a comment so instead I'll address it here.

The question is a good one. The main difference you will see in an OSGi-based application versus a traditional JEE EAR-based application is improved modularity. So the question becomes, does this improved modularity bring me any benefits, and if so what are they? The book "Design Rules, The Power of Modularity" gives a very thorough treatment of the question. It's great background but I get that feeling that Michael may be looking for something a little less theoretical than what you'll find in that book…

One of the main advantages of the SpringSource Application Platform is its ability to provision dependencies on an as-needed basis. The benefits of this are two-fold: it ensures that the Platform's memory footprint is as small as possible and it allows applications to be deployed without encapsulating all of their dependencies in a monolithic deployment unit, e.g. a WAR file. To take advantage of these capabilities you will require an understanding of the Platform's provisioning repository and this blog intends to provide just that.

Where is the provisioning repository and how does it work?

• ext contains external dependencies that are provided with the Platform but are not part of the Platform itself.
• subsystems contains all of the subsystems that comprise the Platform.
• usr is initially empty and is intended to contain user-added dependencies, i.e. anything upon which your applications depend that is not already provided by the Platform.

Runtime provisioning

When a deployed application is started by the Platform its…