Many of the technical experts behind Spring, Grails and many other great SpringSource technologies are active on Twitter. Lots of important news and announcements, like the recent Spring 3.0 RC3 release, are communicated via twitter first. You can stay on top of all the latest news by following @SpringSource on Twitter or choosing to follow any of the SpringSource community experts whose latest tweets are collected on our new Twitter roll-up.

If you want to get the latest SpringSource news, know about the latest STS feature, learn about Grails or just have fun, SpringSource on Twitter is a great place to be. Join the conversation.

It's getting closer. Arjen Poutsma has just announced that Spring 3.0.0.RC3 is now available. This release candidate contains lots of fixes to issues raised by community members.

Download | Documentation | Javadoc API | Change Log | JIRA

Thank you to all of the dedicated community members that have given feedback and identified issues. Please keep up the good work so that we can get a high quality 3.0 GA release.

The Eclipse Foundation has just announced a new project proposal, Enterprise Modules or Project Gemini, whose primary goal is to provide access to standard enterprise technology implementations within a modular framework. The project will include important Spring related OSGi reference implementations (Blueprint Service Implementation and Web Container Integration) contributed by SpringSource as well as contributed code by other industry leaders in modularization. All sub projects will be consumable as modules (or OSGi bundles) and will provide implementations for important and popular enterprise standards.

Gemini will be a part of the Eclipse Runtime Project and developers using Spring and OSGi are encouraged to participate and give input via the Gemini community forum.

Join SpringSource Partner, Blu Age, for a webinar to discuss how developing enterprise business applications requires an agile approach and the right tooling to deliver high performing code and ease-of-development. The webinar will discuss the use of M2Spring, a combination of best-of-breed Model Driven technologies — MagicDraw UML and Blu Age Agile Model Transformation — for modeling and automatically generating 100% SOA applications within the Spring architecture.

The session will explain how the use of M2Spring tools can help improve Spring-based enterprise application development, by providing a high level UML modelling approach for structuring application business logic and simplified integration of Spring implementation, based on model-driven code generation. It will highlight the features of Spring and demonstrate how M2Spring tooling works with the Spring frameworks to generate and build business applications

Be sure to register now for this December 3rd Webinar (10:00 AM Pacific/1:00 PM Eastern/7:00 PM Central Europe)

SpringSource has launched a new free online training video: OSGi and Modular Applications. In this highly practical SpringSource training video Joris Kuipers will teach you how to use OSGi and modularization for Enterprise Java applications.

Key learning points of this video:

• Learn about the basics of OSGi and how it provides a modular, dynamic environment for your applications
• Learn how Spring Dynamic Modules allows to you to apply the familiar Spring programming model to your OSGi-based applications
• Learn how the SpringSource dm Server enables you to build Enterprise Java applications that can benefit from OSGi’s features on the server-side
• Learn about OSGi and Spring-DM best practices
• Learn about options and best practices for applying modularization to your own applications

Register here to download this OSGi training video from senior consultant Joris Kuipers for free.

Fresh from Arjen Poutsma's twitter feed: Spring 3.0.0.RC2 is now available. The release candidate contains lots of fixes to issues raised by community members and has also been updated to support the final versions of JSR-330 "javax.inject" and JSR-303 "javax.validation" APIs.

Download | Documentation | Javadoc API | Change Log | JIRA

Thank you to all of the dedicated community members that have given feedback and identified issues. Please keep up the good work as we move closer to GA.

Today SpringSource has released an update to SpringSource Tool Suite (STS), the best Eclipse-powered development environment for building Spring, Groovy and Grails powered enterprise applications. The latest version (2.2.1) is now available for download and includes:

• Hot on the heels of the latest Spring Roo release, STS now supports Spring Roo 1.0.0.RC3 and enhances the Roo shell with hyperlinking to application files letting you open them for editing with a single click.
• The STS Grails tools have been updated to include a GSP editor for easy page template editing. The Grails tools can be downloaded as an extension to STS.
• Support for the latest milestones of SpringSource dm Server: 2.0.0.M6.
• Improvements to the Cloud Foundry integration that Charles Lee discussed in today's blog post.

Download | ChangeLog | New & Noteworthy | JIRA

We hope you enjoy using STS and please use the community forum to give your feedback and ask questions.

Spring Roo 1.0.0.RC3 has just been released. Spring Roo provides interactive, lightweight, user customizable tooling that enables rapid delivery of high performance enterprise Java applications.

This new release features:

• Over 70 fixes and improvements since RC2
• Cloud Foundry integration
• Significantly expanded documentation (now close to 70 pages)
• Support for creating, installing and removing third-party add-ons
• Colour messages under Windows (experimental; screen shot)
• Spanish and Swedish application localizations
• Integration enhancements with SpringSource Tool Suite (STS)
• Relocation of selected aspects to the Spring Aspects library
• Relocation of Bundlor support to a third-party add-on
• Upgrades to Spring Security 3.0.0.RC1, JUnit 4.7, Maven plugins etc

If you're using SpringSource Tool Suite, you will need to upgrade to STS 2.2.1 to use Roo 1.0.0.RC3. The new STS version supports an API change plus offers several nice new Roo integration features (like global CTRL+R keys plus console hyperlinking). STS is free to download and use.

You can download this new version of Roo, plus access key links at:

http://www.springsource.org/roo

We hope you that enjoy this new release.

SpringOne 2GX 2009 in New Orleans covered tons of important technical announcements about Spring 3.0, Grails tooling and tc Server Developer Edition. Looking towards the future, Adrian Colyer's keynote explained how SpringSource sees cloud computing and virtualization impacting enterprise Java development. After some good laughs about luggage, Adrian gets down to the details:

• 0.09:58: Adrian discusses Cloud Foundry and asks Chris Richardson to explain how to easily run Grails and Java workloads in the cloud.
• 0.21:35: Adrian explains how developers can take advantage of the cloud and invites Chris to demonstrate the integration of Cloud Foundry with SpringSource Tool Suite.
• 0.31:12: After explaining how deployment blueprints are a natural extension of Spring's application blueprints, Adrian introduces Karl Rumelhart from VMware and together they discuss the synergies between blueprints and intelligent virtualization for the data center.

Many thanks to InfoQ who was at SpringOne 2GX to capture so many of the great presentations.

SpringSource has launched a new type of certification: Certified Spring Web Application Developer. When you become a SpringSource Certified Spring Web Application Developer, you receive one of the most valuable credentials available in Enterprise Java. SpringSource training and certification helps to advance your skills and your career, and get the maximum benefit from Spring.

The SpringSource Rich Web trainings prepare you to apply Spring in your current web projects immediately. This track also prepares you for the SpringSource Certified Spring Web Application Developer certification exam, providing you the opportunity to earn a valuable professional credential.

Guide to becoming certified:

• Attend a Rich Web Training by SpringSource
• Click here to request your voucher
• You will receive your free exam voucher
• Arrange an exam at Pearson Vue with the voucher (also available in your city)
• Pass the exam
• You are now a SpringSource Certified Spring Web Application Developer

Check the complete Rich Web Training schedule to find a Rich Web training near you! We can also deliver this course at your company if you have 5 or more developers interested. For more information about the possibilities of an onsite training, please click here