On Thursday October 16th, join Colin Sampaleanu, SpringSource co-founder and original Spring contributor, in this webinar to get a hands-on overview of SpringSource Enterprise, which includes certified, tested and indemnified Spring software coupled with advanced production and development capabilities and support. In this webinar, you will learn about:

• Development tools to inspect and review Spring code
• Ways to monitor and manage the Spring framework and SpringSource dm Server
• Tools available to analyze runtime errors and automatically lookup resolutions
• How to “open the black box” to monitor your Spring-powered applications more effectively

This webinar is offered at two different times: 3pm CEST for developers in Europe and 1pm EDT for developers in North America.

Dear Spring community,
I'm pleased to announce that Spring Dynamic Modules for OSGi(tm) Service Platforms (formerly known as Spring OSGi) 1.1.2 has been released.

Downloads | JavaDocs | Reference Documentation | FAQ | Changelog

We're pleased to an announce the release of Spring Security 2.0.4.

This release contains minor bugfixes and improvements. There are also some changes to the security namespace so you should update to the new 2.0.4 schema file if necessary. There are also some documentation updates, including two new reference appendices in the manual - one describing the database schema used within Spring Security and one describing the elements and attributes in the namespace and how they map to underlying implementation classes.

Download | Changelog | Reference Manual | Web Site

All courses are delivered by the people who build and sustain the Spring Framework. For full details, please visit the main training information page. Here is a summary of some of the upcoming courses and venues:

• Europe & Middle East
  
  • Core Hibernate: October 1st - 3rd - Paris, France (in French)
  • Core Spring: October 14th - 17th - Helsinki, Finland
  • Core Spring: October 14th - 17th - Luxembourg (in French)
  • Developing Rich Web Applications with Spring: October 14th-17th London, UK
  • Core Web Services: October 16th - 17th - London, UK
  • Core Spring: October 21st - 24th - Paris, France (in French)
  • Core Spring: October 21st - 24th - London, UK
  • Core Spring: October 21st - 24th - Zurich, SZ (in German)
  • Core Spring: October 28th - 31st - Antwerp, Belgium
  • Developing Rich Web Applications with Spring: October 28th - 31st - München, Germany (in German)
  • Developing Rich Web Applications with Spring: October 28th - 31st - Amsterdam, NL
  • Core Spring.NET: October 29th-31st - London, UK
  • Core Web Services: November 4th-5th - Helsinki, Finland
  • Core AOP: November 4th-5th - Antwerp, Belgium
  • Core Hibernate: November 5th - 7th - London, UK
  • Core Spring: November 11th - 14th - London, UK
  • Developing Rich Web Applications with Spring: November 18th-21st - Paris, France (in French)
  • Core Web Services: November 18th - 19th - Amsterdam, NL
  • Core Spring: November 18th - 21th - Stuttgart, Germany (in German)
  • Core Spring: November 25th - 28th - Paris, France (in French)
  • Core Spring: November 25th - 28th - Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Core Spring: November 25th - 28th - London, UK
  • Core Spring: December 9th - 12th - London, UK

• Australia/Asia/Other
  
  • Core Spring: October 7th - 10th, Brisbane, AU
  • Developing Rich Web Applications with Spring: October 15th -18th - Brisbane, AU
  • Core Hibernate: October 27th-29th - Sydney, AU
  • Core Web Services: October 30th -31st, Sydney, AU
  • Core Spring: November 3rd-6th,Wellington, NZ
  • Core Hibernate: November 11th-13th,Wellington, NZ
  • Core Web Services: December 11th-12th - Brisbane, AU
  • Core Web Services: December 18th-19th - Wellington, NZ

... plus others

SpringSource announced today that the SpringSource dm Server 1.0.0 is now generally available. The dm Server is a completely modular, OSGi-based Java server to run enterprise Java applications and Spring-powered applications with a new degree of flexibility and reliability.

“In my experience, it's easy to migrate existing war files to the new server and then stepwise modularize them. There is no doubt in my mind that OSGi with some form of application extensions like you have made is the future of Java application servers. This is what we have missed for years. Making it even better is that OSGi is a proven technology and it's very lightweight. From now on this is my first choice of application server.” Søren Dalby Larsen CTO, Conscius Finance A/S

Check out the User Guide and the Programming Guide on how to get started and be sure to download it now.

Spring in Finance is a free, 1 day event, full of sessions and discussions on the Spring Framework, exclusively aimed at Developers and Architects that work in Financial Services. The programme for this day:

• Rod Johnson, CEO of SpringSource, will open the day with a keynote on Spring. 
• Ben Hale will introduce the dm Server and explain why it is the container of choice for Spring Applications.
• David Syer will be presenting on realising the power of Spring Batch. 
• Senior Software Engineer Sam Brannen will explain how to build Web Applications for SpringSource Application Platform.
• Russ Miles will be presenting on Spring .NET and Spring Extensions.
• Jan Machachek will give a hands-on guide to migrating a large Java EE web application to dm Server.
• Mark Thomas will provide a rapid introduction to maximizing performance and security with Tomcat.

The event will be held at the Crypt in London on the 10th of October. Attendance is free for registered participants. Register now!

The recent announcement about the SpringSource Enterprise Maintenance Policy, effective September 2008, has caused some vigorous discussion in the community.

SpringSource Enterprise Maintenance Policy Customers who are using SpringSource Enterprise, available under a subscription, will receive maintenance releases for three years from the general availability of a major new version. These customers receive ongoing, rapid patches as well as regular maintenance releases to address bugs, security vulnerabilities and usability issues, making SpringSource Enterprise the best option for production systems. After a new major version of Spring is released, community maintenance updates will be issued for three months to address initial stability issues. Subsequent maintenance releases will be available to SpringSource Enterprise customers. Bug fixes will be folded into the open source development trunk and will be made available in the next major community release of the software.

Some comments and blogs show an understanding of the new policy but there has also been a lot of misinformation and exaggeration by some others. We have created a Frequently Asked Questions document to help the Spring community and SpringSource customers to understand exactly what this means for them.

Mark Brewer

For Spring developers in German speaking countries we have a new three part webinar series "auf Deutsch".

• 23-Sept-08: Werkzeuge für die Anwendungs-Entwicklung mit Spring
• 30-Sept-08: Enterprise Applikations-Management mit SpringSource AMS
• 07-Sept-08: Next Generation Web-Entwicklung mit der SpringSource Application-Platform

Be sure to check out the sessions and register for these valuable learning opportunities.

All courses are delivered by the people who build and sustain the Spring Framework. For full details, please visit the main training information page. Here is a summary of some of the upcoming courses and venues:

• Europe & Middle East
  
  • Core Spring: September 23rd - 26th - London, UK
  • Developing Rich Web Applications with Spring: September 24th - 26th - Antwerp, Belgium
  • Core Spring: September 30th - October 3rd - Amsterdam, NL
  • Core Spring: September 30th - October 3rd - Paris, France (in French)
  • Core Spring: October 14th - 17th - Helsinki, Finland
  • Core Hibernate: 1st - 3rd October - Paris, France (in French)
  • Core Spring: 14th - 17th October - Luxembourg
  • Developing Rich Web Applications with Spring: October 14th-17th London, UK
  • Core Spring: 21st - 24th October - Paris, France
  • Core Spring: October 21st - 24th - London, UK
  • Core Spring: October 28th - 30th - Antwerp, Belgium
  • Developing Rich Web Applications with Spring: 28th - 30th - München, Germany
  • Core Spring: November 11th - 14th - London, UK
  • Developing Rich Web Applications with Spring: 12th - 14th November - Paris, France
  • Core Spring: November 18th - 21th - Stuttgart, Germany (presented in German)
  • Core Spring: 25th - 28th November - Paris, France (in French)
  • Core Spring: November 25th - 28th - Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Core Spring: November 25th - 28th - London, UK
  • Core Spring: December 9th - 12th - London, UK

• Australia/Asia/Other
  
  • Core Spring: October 7th - 10th, Brisbane, AU
  • Developing Rich Web Applications with Spring(3 Day): September 30th - October 2 - Sydney, AU
  • Developing Rich Web Applications with Spring: October 15th -18th - Brisbane, AU
  • Core Hibernate: October 27th-29th - Sydney, AU
  • Core Web Services: October 30th -31st, Sydney, AU
  • Core Spring: November 3rd-6th,Wellington, NZ
  • Core Hibernate: November 11th-13th,Wellington, NZ

... plus others

Jeremy Grelle, SpringSource senior software engineer and lead of the Spring Faces and Spring JavaScript projects, has written an excellent article about Spring Faces which has been published on JSF Central. Spring Faces provides first class integration between JavaServer Faces and Spring and enhances the experience of developing and running JSF applications. Jeremy's article gives an overview of Spring Faces, provides a sample application and describes how Spring Faces, together with Spring Web Flow, addresses many of the common pain points developers face when working with JSF.

Be sure to check to read Part One of the article.