Engineering | Rob Harrop | July 17, 2008 | ...

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…

Spring Batch 1.1.0 Released

Releases | Dave Syer | July 17, 2008 | ...

Dear Spring community,
We are pleased to announce that Spring Batch 1.1.0.RELEASE has been released!

Downloads | Web Site | Changelog | Announcement

The main change from 1.0 is the addition of shared persistent state between steps in a job (the JobExecution has its own ExecutionContext). This means there is a schema change in the meta-data tables, so any existing 1.0 jobs running in parallel with the new version will have to use a different database schema. There is an upgrade script for users who want to migrate all there 1.0 data and processes to 1.1.

There is also now no need to configure transaction management for the JobRepository, as long as you are using the FactoryBean.

Developing Rich Web Applications with Spring

Engineering | Keith Donald | July 17, 2008 | ...

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.

Key things you will learn in the bootcamp include:

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

Like all SpringSource workshops, "Developing Rich Web Applications with Spring" focuses on being hands-on and holistic. We designed this bootcamp for teams building web applications to equip them with everything they need to hit the ground running with the latest and best version of Spring. It is a great next course for those who have taken Core Spring, and is generally suitable for enterprise Java developers and architects seeking in-depth, comprehensive coverage of Spring for web application development.

SpringSource.com

Washington D.C

Spring Integration 1.0 Milestone 5 Released

Releases | Mark Fisher | July 10, 2008 | ...

Dear Spring community,
We are pleased to announce that Spring Integration 1.0.0.M5 is now available.
Download | Reference Documentation | JavaDoc

To see a list of issues resolved since Milestone 4, view the changelog. For more information, visit the Spring Integration Home.

Mark Fisher
Spring Integration Lead

SpringSource Seminar Day in Central Europe

Engineering | Juergen Hoeller | June 29, 2008 | ...

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.

Rod Johnson Adrian Colyer Rob Harrop Eberhard Wolff Christian Dupuis Jennifer Hickey Keith Donald Juergen Hoeller Mark Pollack

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!

The venue The city

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

Pumping it dry: $200 a barrel and $25,000 per CPU

Engineering | Rod Johnson | June 25, 2008 | ...

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.

This decision probably indicates two things: that Oracle justified the high cost of acquiring BEA (actually, over $8 bn) through its belief that it can make more money from BEA customers by raising prices; and Oracle's expectation that, with no independent vendor left, there is not enough competition left in the Java EE application server market for customers to resist such a price hike. From the same article:

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.

In a two-horse race in the legacy app server market between Oracle and IBM, both vendors might well take that view, effectively creating the OPEC of application server vendors. IBM Senior Vice President and Software Group General Manager Steve Mills recently commented that he is “not particularly concerned with competition" in this space, “particularly from open source offerings.”

Fortunately, for customers…

Spring Security 2.0.2 Released

Releases | Luke Taylor | June 05, 2008 | ...

Spring Security 2.0.2 is now available.

Download | Changelog | Announcement | Web Site

Spring Security 2.0.2 is mainly a bugfix release and upgrading is recommended for users of earlier versions. There are also some minor extensions to the security namespace to support additional configuration options requested by the community.

Running a Spring Batch Job in The SpringSource Application Platform

Engineering | Dave Syer | May 30, 2008 | ...

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

First we'll do a quick tour of the bundles in the sample code. Start the server now, or at any point after you have installed some bundles.

Bundle: hsql-server

This one is useful to have around for development and testing. All it does is launch an instance of HSQLDB in server mode, so that you can connect to it and inspect the database using SQL statements. You can just drag and drop it into the Platform Server instance in the Servers View. Do this first, because the Platform remembers the order in which bundles were installed, and starts them in that order. This one has to be started first because other bundles will try to connect to the database 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…

Open Source, Open Strategy: The SpringSource Manifesto

Engineering | Rod Johnson | May 28, 2008 | ...

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

The Spring story began in 2001, when I began working on the 30,000 lines of framework code I published along with Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development in 2002. My objective was to help others to avoid the pitfalls that I had encountered completing J2EE projects since 1999.

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…

Spring Integration 1.0 Milestone 4 Released

Releases | Mark Fisher | May 24, 2008 | ...

Dear Spring community,
We are pleased to announce that Spring Integration 1.0.0.M4 is now available.
Download | Reference Documentation | JavaDoc

To see a list of issues resolved since Milestone 3, view the changelog. For more information, visit the Spring Integration Home.