A new, two part article has been published on developerWorks: Groovier Spring. Scott Leberknight, Chief Architect at Near Infinity Corporation, breaks down some great ways to use Groovy and Spring together.

• Part One: Integration Basics discusses how to write both Groovy compiled classes and .groovy scripts that produce correctly configured Spring beans. It also discusses how to use these Groovy configured beans properly in your Spring context.
• Part Two: Change application behavior at run time discusses the ability to monitor and detect changes to Groovy scripts while your application is running and automatically reload the changed beans in the Spring application context

Be sure to check it out and participate in the discussion.

A new article has just been published on JavaWorld: Distributed Transactions in Spring, with and without XA. SpringSource Principal Consultant, Dave Syer, guides you through seven patterns for distributed transactions in Spring applications, three of them with XA and four without. This article provides a follow-up to the already popular JavaWorld article from 2007: XA transactions using Spring.

A forum discussion thread has been created for the community to comment on the concepts discussed. Any code updates to the samples will be tracked and recorded here.

Links:

• Sample Code v1.0 (Jan 06, 2009)
• Forum Discussion

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:

• USA and Canada
  • Core Spring: January 6th - 9th - New York, NY
  • Core Spring: January 13th - 16th - Columbus, OH  *NEW LOCATION
    
  • Core Spring and Hibernate: January 13th - 15th - San Francisco, CA
  • Core Spring: January 20th - 23rd - Boston, MA
    
  • Developing Rich Web Apps with Spring: January 20th - 23rd Atlanta, GA
  • Core Spring.Net: January 20th - 22nd - Edison, NJ
  • Core Spring: January 26th - 29th Columbia, MD
  • Core Spring: January 27th - 30th Los Angeles, CA
  • Core Spring: January 27th - 30th San Francisco, CA
  • Core Spring: February 2nd - 5th Colorado Springs, CO *NEW LOCATION
  • Core Spring and Hibernate: February 3rd - 5th Los Angeles, CA
  • Core Spring: February 3rd - 6th Dallas, TX
  • Core Spring: February 10th - 13th Miami, FL
  • Core Spring: February 17th - 20th Phoenix, AZ
  • Developing Rich Web Apps with Spring: February 17th - 20th San Diego, CA
  • Core Spring: February 23rd - 26th Arlington, VA
  • Core Spring: February 24th - 27th San Diego, CA
  • Core Spring: March 3rd - 6th Chicago, IL
  • Developing Rich Web Apps with Spring: March 3rd - 6th New York, NY
  • Core Spring: March 9th - 12th Portland, ME
  • Core Spring: March 10th - 13th Austin, TX
  • Core Spring: March 17th - 20th New York, NY
  • Core Spring: March 23rd - 26th Columbia, MD
    
  • Core Spring.NET: March 24th - 27th New York, NY
  • Core Spring: March 24th - 27th Indianapolis, IN *NEW LOCATION
  • Core Spring: March 24th - 27th Santa Clara, CA
    
  • Core AOP:    March 31st - April 1st Washington, DC
    
  • Core Spring: March 31st - April 3rd Atlanta, GA
    
  • Core Spring: April 7th - 10th Boston, MA
    
  • Core Spring: April 14th - 17th Herndon, VA
  • Core Spring: April 20th - 23rd Arlington, VA
  • Core Spring: April 21st - 24th Kirkland, WA
  • Developing Rich Web Apps with Spring: April 21st - 24th Washington, DC
    
  • Core Spring: April 28th -  May 1st Ottawa, Ontario
    
  • Core Spring: May 5th - 8th San Francisco, CA
  • Developing Rich Web Apps with Spring: May 5th - 8th New York, NY
    

• Europe & Middle East
  • Core Spring and Hibernate (5 days): January 12th - 16th - Oslo, Norway
    
  • Core Spring: January 13th - 16th - Amsterdam, NL
    
  • Core Spring: January 20th - 23rd - Dublin, Ireland    *NEW LOCATION
    
  • Core Spring.Net: January 20th - 23rd - London, UK
  • Core Spring: January 20th - 23rd - Stockholm, Sweden
    
  • Core Spring: January 26th - 29th - London, UK
  • Core Spring: January 27th - 30th - Paris, FR <in French>
    
  • Core Spring: January 27th - 30th - Karlsruhe, Germany <in German>
    
  • Core Spring: January 27th - 30th - Athens, Greece
    
  • Core Spring and Hibernate: January 28th - 30th - London, UK
  • Core AOP: February 5th - 6th - London, UK
  • Core Spring and Hibernate (5 days): February 10th  - 14th - Oslo, Norway
  • Apache Tomcat 5.5 and 6.0: February 10th - 13th - London, UK
  • Core Spring.Net: February 10th - 13th - Munich, DE <in German>
  • Core Spring: February 10th - 13th - Zurich, SW <in German>
    
  • Core Spring: February 10th - 13th - Solingen, DE <in German>
  • Core Spring: February 10th - 13th - Dubai, UAE *NEW LOCATION
  • Developing Rich Web Apps with Spring: February 10th - 13th Stockholm, Sweden
    
  • Developing Rich Web Apps with Spring: February 17th - 20th London, UK
    
  • Core Spring: February 17th - 20th - Brussels, Belgium
    
  • Core Spring: February 24th - 27th - London, UK
  • Core Spring: February 24th - 27th - Paris, FR <in French>
    
  • Core Spring: February 24th - 27th - Gothenburg, Sweden
    
  • Core Spring: February 24th - 27th - Prague, Czech Republic *NEW LOCATION
    
  • Web Services: March 2nd - 3rd - London, UK
  • Apache HTTP Server: March 3rd - 6th - London, UK *NEW COURSE
    
  • Core Spring: March 3rd - 6th - Amsterdam, NL
  • Core Spring: March 3rd - 6th - Gummersbach, Germany <in German>
    
  • Core Spring: March 3rd - 6th - Luxembourg
  • Core Spring: March 10th - 13th - Warsaw, PL *NEW LOCATION
  • Core Spring: March 10th - 13th - Malmo, Sweden
  • Apache Tomcat 5.5 and 6.0: March 17th - 20th - Paris, FR <in French>
    
  • Developing Rich Web Apps with Spring: March 17th - 20th London, UK
  • Core Spring: March 17th - 20th - Wien, Austria <in German>
  • Developing Rich Web Apps with Spring: March 17th - 20th Frankfurt/Main, Germany <in German>
    
  • Spring OSGi with SpringSource dm Server: March 17th - 18th - Amsterdam, NL *NEW COURSE
    
  • Core Spring: March 24th - 27th - Rome, Italy
  • Core Spring: March 24th - 27th - Paris, FR <in French>
    
  • Spring OSGi with SpringSource dm Server: March 24th - 25th - Brussels, Belgium *NEW COURSE
  • Core Spring: March 31st - April 3rd - London, UK
  • Spring OSGi with SpringSource dm Server: March 31st - April 1st - Stockholm, Sweden *NEW COURSE
  • Web Services: March 31st - April 1st - Paris, FR <in French>
  • Core Spring: April 6th - 9th - Krakow, Poland * NEW LOCATION
    

• Australia/Asia/Other
  • Core Spring: January 13th - 16th, Singapore *NEW LOCATION
  • Core Spring and Hibernate: January 27th - 30th, Wellington, NZ
    
  • Core Spring: February 2nd - 5th, Sydney, AU
  • Core Spring: February 2nd-5th, Bangalore, India *NEW LOCATION
  • Core Spring: February 9th - 12th, Hong Kong *NEW LOCATION
  • Core Spring and Hibernate: February 16th-18th - Sydney, AU
  • Core Web Services: February 19th -20th, Sydney, AU
  • Core Spring: February 24th - 27th, Tokyo, Japan *NEW LOCATION
  • Core Spring: February 24th - 27th, Brisbane, AU
  • Developing Rich Web Apps with Spring: March 2nd - 5th Melbourne, AU
    
  • Core Spring: March 2nd-5th - 27th, Seoul, Korea *NEW LOCATION
  • Core Spring: March 10th - 13th, Adelaide, AU
  • Developing Rich Web Apps with Spring: March 17th - 20th Sydney, AU
  • Core Web Services: March 19th -20th, Melbourne, AU
  • Core Spring: March 24th - 27th, Melbourne, AU
  • Core Spring and Hibernate: April 20th-22nd - Brisbane, AU

... plus others

Dear Spring Community,

I'm pleased to announce that the first public development milestone of Spring BlazeDS Integration, the newest member of the open source Spring portfolio, is now available.
Download | Reference Documentation | JavaDocs | Changelog

This is a foundational release that sets the stage for using Adobe Flex and BlazeDS in conjunction with the Spring programming model to build Rich Internet Applications.  We have a number of further integration ideas in mind already for the next milestone, and I would like to invite the community to get involved by trying out this early preview and giving us feedback in the community forum and Jira as we progress towards a full-fledged 1.0.  Check out Using Spring BlazeDS Integration 1.0.0.M1 to get started.

Jeremy Grelle
Spring BlazeDS Integration Lead      

SpringSource has just announced an international Tomcat Expert Seminar Series in January and February of 2009. Designed for operations staff, engineers, and developers who are looking for expert advice on how to optimize and manage Tomcat in production, the half day seminar will cover:

• Large-scale Tomcat deployments
• Performance tuning Tomcat
• Troubleshooting in production environments
• Enterprise capabilities for Tomcat
• Mitigating risk using Tomcat in mission critical deployments

The events are being held in major cities in Europe and North America:

• Europe: Munich, Paris, Amsterdam & London
• North America: New York, Washington, DC, Chicago, Dallas & San Francisco

For a small registration fee, attendees will get valuable information from the experts about the best ways to use Apache Tomcat. Be sure to register now!

On Thursday December 11th, join Apache expert and committer, Filip Hanik, as he introduces SpringSource tc Server - The Tomcat you know, the enterprise capabilities you need. This webinar will give a preview of tc Server capabilities for:

• Managing large scale deployments
• Controlling distributed groups of Tomcat instances
• Deploying enterprise applications reliably to production systems

The webinar is offered at two different times: 3pm CET for developers in Europe and 1pm EST for developers in North America.

Juergen Hoeller's latest blog announces the release of the first milestone for Spring 3.0. The main highlights are the addition of REST support, the Spring Expression Language (EL) and the move to Java 5 and above. The blog post contains the details.

Downloads | Subversion | JIRA | Forums

The third and last day of SpringOne Americas 2008 completed a week full of fascinating technical topics. With yesterday's 1.0 release of Spring Integration, Mark Fisher had attendees sitting in the aisles of the conference room looking to learn the basics of this new project. Craig Walls packed his session with great information on how to develop Spring applications with absolutely no XML and Christian Dupuis showed an early look at the integration announced with VMWare.

In an homage to Monty Python, the final keynote was hijacked by a group of J2EE activists, I hope you enjoy the video.

The second day of SpringOne Americas 2008 continued the great series of technical presentations. The conference rooms were packed for Arjen Poutsma's talk on RESTful Web Applications with Spring 3.0 and Juergen Hoeller's presentation on Spring and Java EE 6. The conference attendees did get to enjoy the sun and surf during the afternoon beach party but the code kept on flying when Adrian Colyer built a Grails application from scratch, live on stage, in less than 10 minutes during his keynote and ran the application on dm Server.

Andrei Stefan and Rob Harrop chat with the emerald rockstar of Spring, Arjen Poutsma.	SpringOne Americas attendees enjoy a beach break in between sessions.