Welcome back to another installment of "This Week in Spring." Today saw a new sunrise, and - more importantly - the release of vSphere 5, the next step in cloud infrastructure!

My head's still buzzing after the excitement that accompanied this morning's launch.
This - and the recent release of vFabric 5 - represent the next stage in cloud innovation, and a huge part of taking your applications to production, and to the cloud, with Spring.

<LI>O'Reilly has published a fantastic roundup on the <a href = "http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/07/7-java-projects.html">seven Java projects that <EM>changed the world</EM></a>!
	The list includes  <B>JUnit</b>, <b>Eclipse</b>, <B>Solr</b>, <b>Hudson and Jenkins</b>, <b>Hadoop</b>, <b>Android,</b> and your favorite enterprise Java framework and mine, the <b style = "color: green;">Spring Framework</b>.
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<LI> 
  Martin Lippert has announced a <a href="http://www.springsource.org/node/3174">new release of SpringSource Tool Suite, version 2.7.1</a>, hot on the heels of the recent 2.7 release. 
 
	The update provides:
	support for Spring Roo 1.1.5,
	ships with Spring Roo 1.1.5, and 
	customizable Roo Shell colors. 
	More details on new features and bug fixes can be found in the <A HREF="http://download.springsource.com/release/STS/doc/STS-new_and_noteworthy-2.7.1.RELEASE.pdf">New and Noteworthy</a> document. Detailed <A href="http://download.springsource.com/release/STS/doc/STS-installation_instructions-2.7.1.RELEASE.pdf">installation instructions</a> are also available. 

	As always downloads are available from the <A href="http://www.springsource.com/landing/best-development-tool-enterprise-java">STS download page.</a>

	
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<LI>
 Gordon Dickens has <a href="http://gordondickens.com/wordpress/2011/07/06/springsource-tool-suite-eclipse-for-spring-developers/">a great look at some of the cool places</a> to start poking around in 	 <A HREF="http://www.springsource.com/developer/sts">
	 SpringSource Tool Suite 2.7.x</a>  on your first flight. 
 
 Gordon, as you know if you read last week's column, is the author of 
 <a href="http://refcardz.dzone.com/refcardz/eclipse-tools-spring">the DZone RefCard for SpringSource Tool Suite</a>.

1. The Spring Roo team has announced Spring Roo 1.1.5. The new release features over 95 improvements and bug fixes since the 1.1.4 release. The next release of Roo will be 1.2.0.RC1 where new features such as application layering support and a new JSF UI option will be introduced.

<LI> Martin Lippert announced that the latest version of the  <a href="http://www.springsource.org/node/3175">SpringSource Tool Suite and CloudFoundry Integration</a>, version 2.7.0.M3, has been released.  This is the latest release of the integration initially announced and explained on <a href="http://blog.springsource.com/2011/04/13/using-cloud-foundry-from-sts/">this blog.</a> </li> 

<li>
If you were unable to attend the recent <a href="http://www.springsource.org/s2gforum2011">S2G Forums</a> in London and Amsterdam, you can catch up on some of the session content because the presentations have now been <a href="http://www.springsource.org/S2GForum2011slides">posted on line</a>. In particular, you can review the slides presented in Rod Johnson's keynote: <a href="http://portal.sliderocket.com/ASXNF/S2GForum2011_Keynote_RodJohnson">What can the cloud do for me?</a> Of course there will be more fantastic content at <a href="http://springone2gx.com/conference/chicago/2011/10/home">SpringOne 2GX 2011</a>, October 25-28th in Chicago. Be sure to <a href="http://springone2gx.com/conference/chicago/2011/10/register">register early</a>. 
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<LI>
	This blog post does a great job illustrating <A Href="http://java.dzone.com/articles/embedded-tomcat-minimal">how to embed Apache Tomcat 7</a>. Cool stuff! 
	
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 <LI> VMware's knowledge base has <EM>so much</eM> knowledge, so much wisdom, that scarcely the  largest, and most scalable Not-Only-SQL solution can contain it. One of the many gems contained in this knowledge base? A recently added post <em><a href="http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=2001172">on converting EJB applications to Spring</a></em>, which references the very <a href="http://www.tomcatexpert.com/presentation/case-study-slides-migrating-hyperic-ejb-spring-jboss-apache-tomcat">successful  Hyperic case-study.</a> Check it out if you're looking for insight from the professionals on how to forge from the bloated, boilerplate ridden code of a typical EJB application a clean, scalable Spring solution grounded in best practices. 
	
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