Dear Spring Community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring LDAP version 1.2.1 has been released. This is an update release that adds a new pooling library and fixes a few problems that were in 1.2. Download | ChangeLog

A summary of the more important changes:

• Added pooling library which features flexible connection validation and better configuration than the built-in pooling. Many thanks to Eric Dalquist for this contribution. (LDAP-85)
• Fixed a problem in AbstractContextSource which led to an unnecessary reference to the LDAP Booster Pack (ldapbp). (LDAP-88, LDAP-89)
• Fixed bug in SimpleLdapTemplate where the wrong target method was being called. (LDAP-93)
• Made createContext in AbstractContextSource protected rather than package private. (LDAP-94)

About Spring LDAP
Spring LDAP is a Java library for simplifying LDAP operations, based on the pattern of Spring's JdbcTemplate. The framework relieves the user of the burden of looking up and closing contexts, looping through results, encoding/decoding values and filters, and more.

The LdapTemplate class encapsulates all the plumbing work involved in traditional LDAP programming, such as creating a DirContext, looping through NamingEnumerations, handling Exceptions and cleaning up resources. This leaves the programmer to handle the important stuff - where to find data (DNs and Filters) and what do do with it (map to and from domain objects, bind, modify, unbind, etc.), in the same way that JdbcTemplate relieves the programmer of all but the actual SQL and how the data maps to the domain model.

In addition to this, Spring LDAP provides transaction support, a pooling library, exception translation from NamingExceptions to a mirrored unchecked NamingException hierarchy, as well as several utilities for working with filters, LDAP paths and Attributes.

Spring-LDAP requires J2SE 1.4. J2SE 1.4 is required for building. J2EE 1.4 (Servlet 2.3, JSP 1.2) is required for running the example.

Where to start
Download the distribution from the link above. The distribution contains extensive JavaDoc documentation as well as full reference documentation and a sample application illustrating different ways to use Spring LDAP.

Home
The permanent home of Spring LDAP is at http://www.springframework.org/ldap.

History
Spring LDAP is based on the SourceForge LdapTemplate project. Users of LdapTemplate are advised to switch to Spring LDAP.

Mattias Arthursson & Ulrik Sandberg
Spring LDAP Project Team

Spring Batch 1.0.0.m3 is now available via the Spring Portfolio Milestone Repository (browse).  See the Spring Batch downloads page for more information.

We have had a lot of good feedback from the community, and from a large number of Accenture projects that are using or evaluating Spring Batch.  So the 1.0.0-m3 release has quite a range of bug fixes and new features.  The main impact to existing users will be class name changes in the input and output abstractions.  New (non-Maven) users will find it much easier to get started with the new .zip assembly including all dependencies.  There is…

Dear Spring Community,
 
We are pleased to announce that the Spring Framework 2.5 final release is now available.

Download | Support | Documentation | Changelog 

Spring 2.5 enhances Spring 2.0 with many exciting new features, including:

• Full Java 6 and Java EE 5 support (JDBC 4.0, JTA 1.1, JavaMail 1.4, JAX-WS 2.0)
• Full-featured annotation-driven dependency injection, including support for 'qualifiers'
• Support for auto-detecting application components in the classpath and auto-configuring them as Spring managed objects
  
• A new bean name pointcut element in AspectJ pointcut expressions
• Built-in support for AspectJ load-time weaving based on the LoadTimeWeaver abstraction
• New XML configuration namespaces "context" and "jms", for maximum convenience
• A completely revised integration test framework, with first-class support for JUnit 4 and TestNG
• A new annotation-based controller model for Spring MVC supporting Servlet and Portlet environments
• Extended SimpleJdbcTemplate functionality, including support for named SQL parameters
• Officially certified WebSphere support
  
• The packaging of Spring Framework jars as OSGi-compliant bundles out of the box
• The ability to deploy a Spring ApplicationContext as a JCA RAR file, for headless application modules
• JCA 1.5 message endpoint management, for Spring-managed JMS and CCI message listeners
  

Check out the series What's New in Spring 2.5? for a walkthrough of the new Spring 2.5 features, including information on how to deploy the Spring sample applications that demonstrate them.

We recommend upgrading to Spring 2.5 from all previous Spring 2.0.x versions in order to benefit from the new features as well as the significant performance enhancements that Spring 2.5 has to offer. Spring 2.5 is designed as a drop-in replacement for Spring 2.0, except for the slightly restructured jar file contents (please see the readme file in the distribution for more information on this).

Please note that Spring 2.5 is still compatible with JDK 1.4.2+ and J2EE 1.3+. Java 1.4 users, for example on WebLogic 8.1 or WebSphere 5.1/6.0, are very welcome to upgrade to Spring 2.5 as well.  We recommend putting the backport-util-concurrent jar on the classpath when running on Java 1.4, which allows Spring and your applications to benefit from significant concurrency enhancements.

Enjoy Spring 2.5,

Juergen Hoeller
Lead, Spring Framework Development

Dear Spring Community,

We are pleased to announce the release of Spring LDAP version 1.2. This is a major release that introduces a number of features and bugfixes.

            Download | ChangeLog | Documentation (HTML) | Documentation (PDF) | API

A summary of the more important changes:

• Java 5 Generics support is now provided with the SimpleLdapTemplate and ParameterizedContextMapper classes.
• Client-side LDAP transactions.
• Several additional API methods, simplifying a number of common tasks.

About Spring LDAP
Spring LDAP is a Java library for simplifying LDAP operations, based on the pattern of Spring's JdbcTemplate. The framework relieves the user of the burden of looking up and closing contexts, looping through NamingEnumerations, encoding/decoding values and filters, and more.

The LdapTemplate class encapsulates all the plumbing work involved in traditional LDAP programming, such as creating, looping through NamingEnumerations, handling Exceptions and cleaning up resources. This leaves the programmer to handle the important stuff - where to find data (DNs and Filters) and what do do with it (map to and from domain objects, bind, modify, unbind, etc.), in the same way that JdbcTemplate relieves the programmer of all but the actual SQL and how the data maps to the domain model.

In addition to this, Spring LDAP provides Exception translation from NamingExceptions to a mirrored, unchecked Exception hirearchy, as well as several utilities for working with filters, LDAP paths and Attributes.

Spring-LDAP requires J2SE 1.4 for running. J2SE 1.4 and javacc is required for building the distribution binaries from sources. J2EE 1.4 (Servlet 2.3, JSP 1.2) is required for running the example.

Where to start
Download the distribution from the link above. The distribution contains extensive JavaDoc documentation as well as full reference documentation and a sample application illustrating different ways to use Spring LDAP.

Home
The permanent home of Spring LDAP is at http://www.springframework.org/ldap.

Mattias Arthursson & Ulrik Sandberg, Spring LDAP Project Team

Dear Spring community,

I'm pleased to announce that the first Spring Framework 2.5 release candidate is available! Spring 2.5 is the culmination of the effort that started as Spring 2.1 milestones, enhancing Spring 2.0 with many new features, such as:

• full Java 6 and Java EE 5 support (JDBC 4.0, JTA 1.1, JavaMail 1.4, JAX-WS 2.0, etc)  
• full-featured annotation-driven dependency injection (including support for 'qualifiers') 
• support for component scanning in the classpath (autodetecting annotated classes) 
• bean name pointcut element in AspectJ pointcut expressions 
• built-in support for for AspectJ load-time weaving (based on the LoadTimeWeaver abstraction) 
• further XML configuration namespaces ("context", "jms") for maximum convenience 
• completely revised framework for integration tests (with support for JUnit 4 and TestNG)
• new annotation-based controller style for Servlet MVC and Portlet MVC
• extended SimpleJdbcTemplate functionality (support for named parameters etc) 
• officially certified WebSphere support (support for the WebSphere 6 UOWManager facility) 
• Spring framework jars are shipped as OSGi-compliant bundles out of the box
• Spring ApplicationContext can be deployed as JCA RAR file (for headless application modules) 
• JCA 1.5 message endpoint management (for Spring-managed JMS and CCI message listeners)
  

Download | Documentation | Changelog 

Particularly worth mentioning are the annotation-based MVC controller style, the JAX-WS support and the TestNG support, all of which are introduced in this release. Furthermore, this release comes in three different distributions, introducing a minimal standard zip and an intermediate with-docs zip.

We recommend upgrading to Spring 2.5 from all previous 2.0.x versions, in order to benefit from the new features as well as from the significant performance enhancements that Spring 2.5 has to offer. Spring 2.5 is designed as a drop-in replacement for Spring 2.0, except for the slightly restructured jar file contents (see the readme file in the distribution).

Note that Spring 2.5 is still compatible with JDK 1.4.2+ and J2EE 1.3+. Java 1.4 users, for example on WebLogic 8.1 or WebSphere 5.1/6.0, are very welcome to upgrade to Spring 2.5 as well! We recommend putting the backport-util-concurrent jar on the classpath when running on Java 1.4, which allows Spring (and hence your applications) to benefit from significant concurrency enhancements.

Juergen Hoeller
Interface21
http://www.interface21.com

Dear Spring Community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring Web Flow 1.0.5 has been released.  This is a bugfix and minor improvement release addressing all issues reported against 1.0.4.  We recommend users upgrade to 1.0.5 from previous 1.0.x versions.

Spring Web Flow is a next generation Java web application controller framework.  The framework provides a powerful system for implementing navigation logic and managing application state consistently across a variety of environments.

Related Web Flow News 

Work on Spring Web Flow 2.0 continues, with the next 2.0 release milestone (M2) due out October 30th. 

Interface21 has an full-time position open in Melbourne, Florida on their Web Application Development Products Team, the team responsible for sustaining the development of Spring MVC, Spring Web Flow, and emerging Spring Web technologies.  Experienced web application developers able to work in Melbourne, FL are encouraged to apply.

Working with Spring Web Flow, the definitive guide to Spring Web Flow 1.0, has been published by Erwin Vervaet, founder and co-lead of the project. 

Dear Spring community,

I'm pleased to announce that Spring 2.0.7 has been released.

Spring 2.0.7 is a bug fix and minor enhancement release in the Spring 2.0 series, addressing all issues reported since 2.0.6 and backporting various refinements from 2.1 M4.

Please see the changelog and JIRA roadmap for all the details of the issues addressed in this release.

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

We are pleased to announce that Spring Batch 1.0 M2 has been released! This milestone release introduces:

• A set of Core APIs that can be used for configuring and building batch applications.
• An execution environment and utilities for managing and monitoring multi-step jobs in a single virtual machine.
• Packaging the framework into three pieces: infrastructure, core and execution.

Dear Spring Community,

I'm pleased to announce that Spring Framework 2.1 M4 has been released! This milestone release introduces:

• 'qualifier' annotation support for choosing a specific @Autowired match;
• our next-generation Spring TestContext Framework with support for JUnit4;
• SimpleJdbcCall operation object for stored procedure calls;
• support for autowiring of scripted objects (Groovy, JRuby, BeanShell);
• support for Tiles2 views in Spring Web MVC.

Which leads me to some further exciting news...

We've been reviewing the overall set of features that we introduced in the recent 2.1 milestones:

• full Java 6 and Java EE 5 support
• full-featured annotation-driven dependency injection
• support for component scanning in the classpath
• "beanName" pointcut element in AspectJ pointcut expressions
• built-in support for AspectJ load-time weaving
• further XML configuration namespaces (context, jms)
• extended SimpleJdbcTemplate functionality
• officially certified WebSphere support
• Spring ApplicationContext can be deployed as RAR file
• JCA 1.5 message endpoint management (for JMS and CCI)
• completely revised framework for integration tests

We concluded that this goes significantly beyond what we originally planned for Spring 2.1. The version number 2.1, as used for the milestones, does not reflect the significance and the comprehensiveness of the features in this release.

So I'm pleased to announce that the next release will be called Spring Framework 2.5 RC1, with the 2.1 milestones seamlessly leading into Spring Framework 2.5 as the upcoming major release! Check out the Interface21 team blog for the official announcement and for upcoming posts on specific Spring 2.5 features as we move closer to the final release.

Spring 2.1 M4 is here. Long live Spring 2.5! :-)

Enjoy,

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