Dear Spring community,

We are pleased to announce the first release candidate of Spring LDAP 1.2, with a number of features and bug fixes. Only the most important are listed here. For a complete listing, please see the changelog. The release is available for download here.

• Implemented client-side transaction support for Spring LDAP. See reference documentation for further information (LDAP-29).
• Changed the exception hierarchy to be an unchecked mirror of the JNDI NamingException hierarchy (LDAP-4).
• Exceptions thrown by Spring LDAP are now always Serializable, regardless of whether the wrapped NamingException is (which is not always the case) (LDAP-14).
• Rewrote LdapEncoder.nameDecode() to solve problem with national characters and remove regular expression used in parsing, drastically improving Distinguished Name parsing performance as a bonus (LDAP-30).
• Upgraded to Spring 2.0.4 internally. Spring 1.2.x is still supported (LDAP-35, LDAP-51).

Note that a number of API-breaking changes have been made in this release, mainly package restructuring stuff. Consequently, this is NOT a drop-in replacement for Spring LDAP 1.1.2, though upgrading should not present all that much work. Please see the supplied upgrade guide for details.

The Spring LDAP Team

Dear Spring Community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring 2.0.5 has been released.  This is is a bugfix and enhancement release in the Spring 2.0 series, addressing all issues reported since 2.0.4 and introducing further concurrency improvements. We recommend to upgrade to Spring 2.0.5 from all previous 2.0.x releases.

Please see the changelog and JIRA roadmap for all the details of the 63 issues addressed in this release.

Juergen Hoeller
Lead, Spring Framework Development
Interface21 - http://www.interface21.com

Dear Spring Community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring Web Flow 1.0.2 has been released.  This is a bugfix and enhancement release, addressing all bugs reported against the Spring Web Flow 1.0 series and significantly enhancing Spring Web Flow's support for users of Java Server Faces (JSF).  We recommend upgrading to this release from previous versions.

Spring Web Flow is a next generation Java web application controller framework.  The framework provides a powerful system for implementing navigation logic and managing application state consistently across a variety of environments.

New and Noteworthy in this Release

Spring Web Flow 1.0.2 is a solid, stable release that serves as a drop-in replacement for existing users and also contains several noteworthy enhancements.  Three of these enhancements are particularly worth noting in more detail:

Significantly enhanced JSF integration

Now when used as a JSF extension, Spring Web Flow provides:

• A NavigationHandler that brings the full power of the Web Flow navigation system to JSF developers.  This system allows for implementing dynamic navigation rules and solves the infamous back-button problem out-of-the-box.
  
• A state management system providing UI Components full access to beans managed in any of Web Flow's conversational data scopes, including "conversation", "flow", and "flash" scope.  These scopes complement JSF's default scopes and are particularly useful for interactive web applications that apply Ajax techniques using libraries such as Ajax4JSF.
  
• Native support for all major JSF view technologies.  With Spring Web Flow 1.0.2, views that participate in flows are standard JSF views whether they are built using JSP or Facelets.  Any JSF UI Component can now bind to beans managed in any of the conversational scopes seamlessley.

Please run and review the sellitem-jsf sample for a quick assessment of these enhancements in action.  They significantly improve the ease of using Spring Web Flow in a JSF environment, and are the start of a larger effort that will continue into the 1.1 release and beyond.

Expanded practical documentation

Complete walk-throughs of each of Spring Web Flow's sample applications are now provided in the reference manual.  These walk-throughs take you through the implementation of each sample, and explain best practices and design considerations along the way.   After downloading the release, see the 'Practical' chapter for how to get the sample applications running inside your IDE.

Spring IDE 2.0 integration

The upcoming 2.0 version of the Spring IDE Eclipse Plugin features a Graphical Web Flow Editor and XML Flow Definition Editor.  Beginning with Spring Web Flow 1.0.2, each of the sample applications has been Spring IDE 2.0 enabled, allowing you to easily assess these tools as they progress.  To evaluate Spring IDE 2.0 simply import the sample projects into Eclipse and install the latest version of the Spring IDE 2.0 plugin from the nightly update site.

Spring Web Flow 1.1 Road Map 

Work has begun on Spring Web Flow 1.1 in anticipation of a first release candidate becoming available at JavaOne.  Building on 1.0.2, this release will offer major new functionality including support for conversational persistence contexts, Acegi Security integration, unified EL integration, integrated Spring 2.0 custom scopes, enhanced support for Java-based flows, and support for flow composition and inheritance.

Special thanks to Jeremy Grelle, Rossen Stoyanchev, and Christian Dupuis for their major contributions to this release.  It is an exciting time to be a part of the Web Flow community!

Keith Donald - Interface21
Erwin Vervaet - Ervacon
Leads, Spring Web Flow Development 

Dear Spring Community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring 2.0.4 has been released.  This is a bugfix and enhancement release, addressing all reported bugs against the Spring 2.0 series and introducing significant performance improvements.  We recommend upgrading to Spring 2.0.4 from previous 2.0.x releases.

Regarding the performance improvements, repeated creation of Spring bean instances is up to 12 times faster in this release than previous versions of Spring 2.0. AspectJ-based weaving performance has also increased by a significant factor.

Please see the changelog and JIRA roadmap for all the details of the 77 issues addressed in this release.

Juergen Hoeller
Lead, Spring Framework Development
Interface21 - http://www.interface21.com

Dear Spring community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring 2.0.3 has been released.

This is a bugfix and enhancement release in the Spring 2.0 series, including about 200 (!) refinements and fixes. Furthermore, this release introduces support for the JSR-166 (java.util.concurrent) backport project and basic support for JCA 1.5 (ResourceAdapter bootstrap, WorkManager support), as well as extended support for IBM WebSphere and Oracle OC4J.

Among the noteworthy enhancements are DefaultMessageListenerContainer's dynamic scaling capability and the thoroughly revised scripting integration, supporting more styles of writing Groovy and BeanShell scripts and providing seamless interaction with Spring's AOP facilities. This release also includes refinements in the AspectJ pointcut support as well as in the scoped-proxy facility.

See the changelog for details!

Cheers,
Juergen
 
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Juergen Hoeller
Interface21 - http://www.interface21.com

Dear Spring community,

I'm pleased to announce that Spring 1.2.9 has finally been released. Download | Docs | Changelog.

This is a bugfix and refinement release for people still using the 1.2 series, and is intended as a drop-in update for Spring 1.2.8. It contains fixes for all problems reported since 1.2.8, and includes various backports from the Spring 2.0 branch.

Note that this is the last planned release in the Spring 1.2 branch. Patch releases for 1.2.9 will only be provided in case of critical issues. We recommend to upgrade to Spring 2.0 for long-term usage.

Cheers,
Juergen
 
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Juergen Hoeller
Interface21
http://www.interface21.com

Dear Spring Community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring Web Flow 1.0.1 has been released.

Spring Web Flow is a next generation Java web application controller framework that allows developers to model user actions as high-level modules called flows.  The framework delivers improved productivity and testability while providing a strong solution to enforcing navigation rules and managing application state.

Release Notes

Spring Web Flow 1.0 saw over 10,000 downloads in a two month period and is used heavily within Fortune 500 companies.  This is the first 1.0 maintenance release, including fixes for bugs that have been reported since 1.0 final, as well as introducing several minor enhancements. Please see the changelog for all the details.

Getting Started

The best way to get started with Spring Web Flow is to download the release, read Erwin's practical introduction, and walk through the sample applications.  We recommend reviewing all samples, starting with Phonebook, supplementing with reference manual material as needed. Ten sample applications ship with the release, each demonstrating a distinct set of product features.

Enjoy!

Keith Donald and Erwin Vervaet
Spring Web Flow Project Leads

Dear Spring community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring 2.0.2 has been released.

This is the second maintenance release for Spring 2.0, including fixes for bugs that have been reported since 2.0.1, as well as introducing some minor enhancements. Please see the changelog for all the details.

Dear Spring community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring 2.0.1 has been released. Download | Docs | Changelog.

This is the first maintenance release for Spring 2.0, including fixes for most bugs that have been reported since 2.0 final as well as many minor enhancements. This release also introduces OpenJPA support and GlassFish weaving support. Furthmermore, it features redesigned AspectJ support internals and an improved bean definition tooling SPI.

As always, please see the changelog for the details.

If you are new to the Spring 2.0 series, please also see the original Spring 2.0 announcement for more information.

FYI, the Spring 2.0.2 release is scheduled for end of December. Our JIRA road map outlines the issues that are planned to be addressed in that release.

Juergen
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Juergen Hoeller
Lead, Spring Framework Development
Chief Architect, Interface21
http://www.springframework.org
http://www.interface21.com