This is the first blog in a series of pre-release blogs in preparation for Spring Cloud Stream 2.0.0.RELEASE.

Preface

Spring Cloud Stream 2.0 includes a complete revamp of content-type negotiation for the channel-based binders to address performance, flexibility and most importantly consistency. The following blog touches on some of the key points around what has been done, what to expect and how it may help you.

Introduction

Data transformation is one of the core features of any message-driven microservice architecture. In Spring Cloud Stream, such data is represented as a Spring Message.

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After a long and exciting journey we are pleased to announce the first Release Candidate of the Spring Cloud Stream Elmhurst release train - Elmhurst.RC1/2.0.0.RC1.

Spring Cloud Stream Elmhurst 2.0.0.RC1 is available for use in the Spring Milestone repository. The release notes include relevant information about version compatibility with Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, Spring AMQP, and Spring for Apache Kafka.

Given that this is a Release Candidate the following section provides a brief summary of features and improvements not just included in this release but for 2.0 in general, with details to…

I am pleased to announce that Spring for Apache Kafka 2.1.3.RELEASE is available.

In addition, the Spring Integration extension spring-integration-kafka 3.0.2.RELEASE is also available.

While these are point releases in the 2.1.x (and 3.0.x) lines; they introduce some important new features:

Spring for Apache Kafka

Change Log

• Request/Reply messaging with the ReplyingKafkaTemplate

• pause/resume on listener containers

• default @KafkaHandler method for multi-method @KafkaListener

• ChainedKafkaTransactionManager to improve transaction synchronization scenarios

Spring Integration Kafka

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On behalf of the Spring Integration team I am pleased to announce that the 5.0.2.RELEASE maintenance version for the Spring Integration is available.

It can be downloaded from Maven Central, JCenter, and our release repository:

compile "org.springframework.integration:spring-integration-core:5.0.2.RELEASE"

As usual I would like to thank all community members for their ongoing active contributions to the framework!

Along with upgrades to the latest Spring Framework 5.0.4 and Reactor Bismuth-SR6 versions, this Spring Integration support version provides a number of bug fixes, especially for the @ServiceActivator with a collection method argument and LockRegistryLeaderInitiator…

On behalf of the team, it is my great pleasure to announce that Spring Boot 2.0.0.RC2 has been released and is now available from our milestone repository.

This release closes 180 issues and pull requests. It is our second, and hopefully final, release candidate. All being well, 2.0.0 will be released next week. Thank you to everyone who tried RC1 and provided us with valuable feedback.

We've refined a number of items from RC1, including significant improvements to our Micrometer integration and numerous dependency upgrades. For a complete list of changes and upgrade instructions, please see the Spring Boot 2.0.0.RC2 Release Notes…

I’m pleased to announce the release of Spring Security 5.0.2. This release fixes a number of bugs and updates to dependency versions to align with Spring Boot’s upcoming release. It also includes some changes to work with Jackson 2.9.4. For a complete list of changes, refer to the changelog.

Project Site | Reference | Help

On behalf of the community, I'm pleased to announce the general availability of Spring Vault 2.0. Since the first efforts for Spring Vault 2.0, it has been a 10 months ride until we reached this GA release. These are the most significant changes in Spring Vault 2.0:

• Upgrade to Java 8 and Spring Framework 5.
• Reactive Support.
• Improved null-safety by providing JSR-305 annotated API.
• Vault repository support through Spring Data KeyValue repositories.
• Kubernetes, AWS ECS/IAM authentication.
• RoleId/SecretId unwrapping for AppId authentication.
• Spring Security integration with VaultBytesEncryptor and VaultRandomBytesKeyGenerator.
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On behalf of the Spring Data team, I'm pleased to announce the fourth service release of the Kay release train in prospect of Spring Boot 2.0 RC2.

This service release ships on top of the just-released Spring Framework 5.0.4 and Project Reactor 3.1.4, and provides the answer to persistence the code and everything. Kay SR4 will be picked up by Spring Boot 2.0 RC2 for your convenience and is a recommended upgrade to users of the Kay release train.

You can find all details within the linked changelogs.

• Spring Data Commons 2.0.4 - Artifacts - JavaDocs - Documentation - Changelog
• Spring Data JPA 2.0.4 - Artifacts - JavaDocs - Documentation - Changelog
• Spring Data KeyValue 2.0.4 - Artifacts - JavaDocs - Documentation - Changelog
• Spring Data for Apache Cassandra 2.0.4 - Artifacts - JavaDocs - Documentation - Changelog
• Spring Data for Apache Solr 3.0.4 - Artifacts - JavaDocs - Documentation - Changelog
• Spring Data MongoDB 2.0.4 - Artifacts - JavaDocs - Documentation - Changelog
• Spring Data Gemfire 2.0.4 - Artifacts - JavaDocs - Documentation - Changelog
• Spring Data Neo4j 5.0.4 - Artifacts - JavaDocs - Documentation - …

Hi Spring fans! Welcome to another installment of This Week in Spring! This week I'm speaking at the San Diego JUG with Mario Gray on testing with Spring. Then I'm off to the IBM Index conference here in San Francisco where I'll be talking about building reactive microservices, and then it's off to Devnexus in Atlanta, GA, where I'll be talking about Kotlin and testing. I hope you'll join me and say hi if you're nearby.

• Stéphane Nicoll has just announced Spring Framework 5.0.4.
• Check out this whitepaper on building flexible Spring Cloud Data Flow data pipelines
• It's now even easier to use Spring Cloud Stream from the Spring Initializr: now you need only choose a binder implementation (Kafka, or RabbitMQ) and then choose whether you want the implementation to be reactive or not, and you're off to the races!
• Spring Cloud Task lead Michael Minella just announced Spring Cloud Task 2.0.0.M3. The new release includes smarter default behavior when an application closes, the ability to restrict tasks from running concurrently, …