Up to this point the Spring Portfolio Maven artifacts, especially the snapshots, were inconsitently created and scattered about in various locations. Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been working to get the projects to be more consistent in the creation and uploading of these artifacts.

Maven Repositories

One of the most useful improvements to the Maven support in the Spring Portfolio is the use of consistent repository locations. There are three different repositories depending on your level of comfort with the code.

Release Repository

For any final release (Spring 2.5, Spring Web Flow 2.0, etc.) the Maven artifacts for that release will be uploaded to the Maven Central repository (http://repo1.maven.org/maven2). Using this repository requires no effort on your part as Maven will automatically look for artifacts there.

The artifacts in this repository do follow expected repository behaviors and will not (and cannot) not be removed.

Milestone Repository

For any milestone release (Spring 2.5-RC1, Spring Web Flow 2.0-M2, etc.) the Maven artifacts for that release will be uploaded to the the Spring Milestone repository (http://s3.amazonaws.com/maven.springframework.org/milestone). Using this repository requires you to add an entry to the <repositories/> element in your POM. It should look like this:

<repository>
    <id>spring-milestone</id>
    <name>Spring Portfolio Milestone Repository</name>
    <url>http://s3.amazonaws.com/maven.springframework.org/milestone</url>
</repository>

The artifacts in this repository do not follow expected repository behaviors and will be removed regularly. Upon the release of a final version (Spring 2.6, Spring Web Flow 2.1, etc.) all milestone versions from the previous release of an artifact will be removed. For example, when Spring 2.6 is released, Spring 2.5 milestones will be removed while Spring 2.6 milestones will be retained.

Snapshot Repository

For any snapshot build (Spring 2.5-SNAPSHOT, Spring Web Flow 2.0-SNAPSHOT, etc.) the Maven artifacts for that build will be uploaded to the Spring Snapshot repository (http://s3.amazonaws.com/maven.springframework.org/snapshot). Using this repository requires you to add an entry to the <repositories/> element in your POM. It should look like this:

<repository>
    <id>spring-snapshot</id>
    <name>Spring Portfolio Snapshot Repository</name>
    <url>http://s3.amazonaws.com/maven.springframework.org/snapshot</url>
</repository>

The artifacts in this repository do not follow expected repository behaviors and will be removed regularly. At least the last 10 snapshot builds for a given artifact will be retained. If an artifact is removed from a distribution its snapshot builds will be removed immediately. On the release of a milestone or a final release, all snapshots for an artifact will be removed and a new snapshot for the next release created.

Repository Browsing

The milestone and snapshot repositories are both hosted on Amazon’s S3 service and as such the directory structure is not human-readable. To view the repositories in a human-readable format, use the S3Browse utility.

• Milestone Repository: http://s3browse.com/explore/maven.springframework.org/milestone
• Snapshot Repository: http://s3browse.com/explore/maven.springframework.org/snapshot

Only use these URLs for human-readable viewing. If you use them as the URLs for your POMs you will encounter errors.

Artifact Sources

Another important improvement is the addition of source artifacts for all releases. You will notice in the milestone repository all artifacts have sources deployed with them. This will also be true as we go forward for all final releases as well. Specifically, starting with the Spring 2.5 release, in addition to the combined Spring sources, each module will also have a source artifact.

Spring Snapshots

The final improvement is one that isn’t yet complete; a nightly snapshot of Spring. I’m pleased to say that this is close to being completed. I’m still working out the final kinks with respect to the Maven Ant Tasks but this will eventually start showing up and I’ll announce it again when it does. As well, you can expect this functionality to eventually make its way out to all of the other ANT-based Spring Portfolio projects so that all projects will create Maven snapshots as well as milestones.

My first blog post - and what a big announcement to make :-)

After a series of Spring 2.1 milestone releases, we've been reviewing the overall set of features that we introduced:

• full Java 6 and Java EE 5 support (JDBC 4.0, JTA 1.1, JavaMail 1.4, JAX-WS 2.0, etc)
• full-featured annotation-driven dependency injection (including support for 'qualifier' annotations)
• support for component scanning in the classpath (autodetecting annotated classes)
• bean name pointcut element in AspectJ pointcut expressions
• built-in support for for AspectJ load-time weaving (based on Spring's LoadTimeWeaver abstraction)
• further XML configuration namespaces ("context", "jms") for maximum convenience
• extended SimpleJdbcTemplate functionality (support for named parameters etc)
• officially certified WebSphere support (support for the WebSphere 6 UOWManager facility etc)
• Spring framework jars are shipped as OSGi-compliant bundles out of the box
• Spring ApplicationContext can be deployed as JCA RAR file (for headless application modules)
• JCA 1.5 message endpoint management (for Spring-managed JMS and CCI message listeners)
• completely revised framework for integration tests (with support for JUnit 4 and TestNG)

We concluded that this goes significantly beyond what we originally planned for Spring 2.1. The version number 2.1, as used for the milestones, does not reflect the significance and the comprehensiveness of the features in this major release.

So I'm pleased to announce that the 2.1 milestones will seamlessly turn into Spring Framework 2.5 as the upcoming major release! Spring 2.5 is scheduled for final release in…

Interface21 got mentioned in testimony before Congress.

Jonathan Silver, a venture capitalist and founder of Core Capital Partners, testified on Thursday against proposed changes in tax rates applying to VCs. One of his arguments was that venture-based companies create jobs across the US:

Where will the next important businesses come from? The truth is, no one knows and that’s why venture capitalists look everywhere, and in all fifty states, for those opportunities. It’s why venture funds have backed Music Nation in New York City and Incept Biosystems in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Interface21 in West Melbourne, Florida, Boston Power in Westborough, Massachusetts and Click Forensics in San Antonio, Texas.

Actually, our headquarters are moving to San Mateo, California. Like many software vendors, we believe that Silicon Valley is the best place to achieve our potential. The largest concentration of our partners is here, and it's a great place to recruit executive talent in the software business. However, Silver's point is still valid. We are creating jobs in Florida--where our web team is based and is currently doing great things with Spring Web Flow…

It's time for the next Java Meetup again. I decided to postpone the 7th installment of this quarterly event in Amsterdam until right after summer, because most people here in The Netherlands take a couple of weeks off in August or so.

I've looked at our internal schedules and it seems September 21st is the only day left in September, so I hope it fits with other people's schedules as well.

We'll be doing it at the same location as last April's meetup, as this is pretty convenient for us and everybody seems to be fine with it. The first Java Meetup ever was held in my favorite Amsterdam hangout…

In a recent blog entry Marc Logemann touches on the subject of proxy performance. In his entry he asks for a white paper by 'the Spring guys'. I don't want to spend (p)ages and (p)ages on discussing the differences up to the nanosecond between proxies and byte code weaving mechanisms, but I do think it's valuable to re-iterate once again what the differences are and whether or not this discussion matters at all.

What are proxies and why do we use them?

In other words, proxies can be used as stand-ins for real objects to apply extra behavior to those objects--be it security-related behavior, caching or maybe performance measurements…

Introduction

Grails seems to be going from strength to strength, and it looks like it definitely "has legs", as they say. I am quite interested in stretching those legs a little outside the web application arena. If you are aware of my work on Spring Batch, you will probably be able to guess where that might take me. But for this article I wanted to just share some experiences I've had with the basic, low-level deployment and build of a Grails application.

I have a love/hate relationship with Maven 2, and I am learning to love Grails, but sadly the two do not play particularly well together. It would…

A couple of month ago, we start publishing polls on www.springframework.org asking people to provide their feedback about Spring, some of its features and how they are using those features. The first question I posted was whether or not people were checking required dependencies and if so, what mechanisms they used. I quickly followed up on this question asking the community what transaction management strategy it used.

To my delight when I first checked the results, back in March, a lot of people told us by voting in the first poll that they were using the @Required annotation. The second…

The Java EE 6 proposal (JSR 316) was published today. I believe that this will be the most important revision of the platform since it was released nearly 10 years ago, and that it should be welcomed by users of the technology. Interface21 is happy to be a supporter of this JSR, and I am looking forward to contributing to it.

Java EE (known as J2EE for most of its history) has played a valuable role in creating a market for Java middleware. However, over those 10 years, important issues have emerged with the platform, such as:

• The need for a Java EE compliant server to be bloated with a range of functionality that is of little interest to the vast majority of users
• The fact that enterprise requirements have changed since J2EE was envisaged and that a "one size fits all model" is less and less appropriate
• The fact that enterprise Java has been greatly strengthened by the emergence of frameworks (especially in open source) that make developers more productive and their production applications more efficient and maintainable
• New challenges such as Ruby on Rails, and even .NET, showing that, in a time of rapid change and innovation, a cosy 2-3 year release cycle imperils the entire platform

Java EE 6 is an important revision of the platform that has the…

Michael Hickins recently published a piece on eWeek entitled Is Open Source Dying? The title drew me in, and no doubt plenty of other folk too. But the article doesn't prove the case, although it contains some interesting points that merit discussion.

Most of the article concerns speculation about the experience of government with open source, and the motives of vendors such as IBM. I prefer to judge companies and individuals by their actions, rather than speculation about their motives, and there is plenty of evidence that IBM, for example, takes open source very seriously. There's plenty of…