News and Announcements  

There is a new German Interface21 mailing list with news about Interface21, Spring and other Interface21 products. Feel free to join at http://lists.interface21.com/listmanager/listinfo/news-de . The content of the mailing list will be in German.

Interface21 is pleased to offer a number of Spring Framework 2.0 and AOP training events in the upcoming period, delivered by core Spring Framework developers. For full details, please visit the main training information page. Here is a summary of some of the upcoming courses and venues:

• North America
• Core Spring: December 18th - 21st, Boston, MA
  
• Core Spring: January 9th - 12th, Orlando, FL
  
• Core Spring: January 23rd - 26th, Washington, DC
  
• Core Spring: February 6th - 9th, Los Angeles, CA
  
• Core Spring: February 20th - 23rd, Chicago, IL
• Core AOP: March 6th - 9th, Chicago, IL
  
• Core Spring: March 6th - 9th, New York, NY
• Core Spring: March 27th - 30th, Dallas, TX
  

• Europe/Asia
• Core Spring: December 19th - 22nd, London, UK
  
• Core Spring: January 22nd - 25th, London, UK
  
• Core Spring: February 5th - 8th, Singapore
• Core AOP: February 6th - 9th, London, UK
• Core Spring: February 13th - 16th, Paris, France
  
• Core Spring: February 19th - 22nd, Sydney, Australia
• Core Spring: February 20th - 23rd, Frankfurt, Germany
• Core Spring: February 20th - 23rd, Amsterdamn, NL
• Core Spring: February 20th - 23rd, London, UK
• Beginning Spring: March 13th - 15th, Amsterdamn, NL
• Core Spring: March 19th-22nd, Melbourne, Australia
  

... plus others

A few days ago Rod Johnson blogged on the Spring Java Configuration project, and it's attracted quite a bit of interest, 29 comments (and counting) on the blog entry itself, plus a lot of external discussion.

While most people currently use XML to configure bean definitions in their Application Contexts (and probably will continue to do so), Spring's versatility and metadata based internal handling of bean definitions means alternatives to XML config are easy to implement. Spring has always supported Properties files for the purpose (with limited functionality) and others exist such as this Groovy Bean Builder.

Please note that the Java Config is alpha level and should be considered experimental and subject to change. That said, it's worth taking a look at and thinking about the possibilities. Any feedback is welcome.

The permanent home of the project is here. 

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

Dear Spring Community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring LDAP version 1.1.1 has been released. This is an update release that adds several new features and fixes a few problems that were in 1.1. Download | ChangeLog | Documentation | API

A summary of the more important changes:

• Added capability to use server-side controls in search.
• DirContextAdapter.getNameInNamespace() now returns the full DN.
• DistinguishedName now supports multi-valued RDNs separated by a '+' sign, like "cn=Rod+sn=Johnson", for example.
• Added lookup methods that take an array of return attribute names.
• Upgraded Spring to 2.0 internally. Spring 1.2.8 is still supported.

I've just spent more than an hour killing comment spams left by bots. Unfortunately, until we upgrade to the current version (4.7) of Drupal, which will allow the use of a captcha module for user registrations, it's much too easy for bots to sign up, and then leave spam comments. So I have turned off comments in the meantime.

Interface21 is pleased to offer a number of Spring Framework 2.0 and AOP training events in the upcoming period, delivered by core Spring Framework developers. For full details, please visit the main training information page. Here is a summary of some of the upcoming courses and venues:

• North America
• Core Spring: December 18th - 21st, Boston, MA
  
• Core Spring: January 9th - 12th, Orlando, FL
  
• Core Spring: January 23rd - 26th, Washington, DC
  
• Core Spring: February 6th - 9th, Los Angeles, CA
  
• Core Spring: February 20th - 23rd, Chicago, IL
  

• Europe/Asia
• Core Spring: November 20th - 23rd, Stockholm, Sweden
  
• Core Spring: November 21st - 24th, London, UK
  
• Core Spring: November 21st - 24th, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  
• Core Spring: November 21st - 24th, Munich, Germany
  
• Core Spring: December 19th - 22nd, London, UK
  
• Core Spring: January 22nd - 25th, London, UK
  
• Core Spring: February 5th - 8th, Singapore
• Core Spring: February 19th - 22nd, Sydney, Australia

... plus others

Interested in a full-course of Spring during Winter? The Spring Experience 2006 conference is taking place in sunny Hollywood, Florida, from Dec. 7th-10th. 

The German Spring User Group has been founded. The goal is to exchange information, experiences and opinions about the Spring framework and other related technologies. The Use Group is open for everyone at http://groups.google.com/group/sugg  . The communication in the group is in German. We are looking forward to meet you there and have a lot of interesting discussions!

Following the release of Spring 2.0, the JSF-Spring team is working on a release that will provide Spring 2.0 compatibility and some exciting new features:

• A new implementation of JSF-Spring Config using Spring’s namespace handlers. JSF-Spring Config enables the configuration of JSF plugins and components using Spring with all of it’s configuration facilities.
• Integration of any kind of controller into JSF’s lifecycle via SpringMVC. The controller will be mapped using URLs just like in SpringMVC, but it will be executed within JSF’s lifecycle.
• Forms that will issue GET requests which will run through JSF’s lifecycle and use selective state saving.

The JSF-Spring developers have been greatly disappointed by the lack of “webness” they experienced in their JSF projects, given the fact that everything is a POST and the dependency to javascript. The latter two features are an attempt to enable developers to take advantage of JSF as a component based framework on one hand but still deliver applications that conform to well established web standards on the other hand. More information can be found here.