Spring Framework 3.0 Released

Spring Framework is a Java API framework that has captured the hearts of many developers. The latest release from SpringSource, the company who sponsors the project announced the latest release. Key features include: Spring expression language (SpEL), Extended support for annotation-based components, standardized dependency injection annotations, declaration model validation based on constraint annotations, comprehensive REST support, rich native Portland 2.0 support and more. The latest release is compatible with Java EE 6, in terms of runtime environment, supports JPA 2.0 final, JSR 303 validation mode, and eve the newly introduced @ManagedBean (JSR-250 v1.1) annotation for component scanning. Read Juergen Hoeller’s Blog for all the details about the Spring 3 release. There is also a great presentation on InfoQ on the new features.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should also know that the term “J2EE” should be eliminated from your vocabulary. That is because the “2” was a reference to Java 1.2. Java is now at version 6 and earlier this month Sun has announced that Java Enterprise Edition 6 is now gold. So.. make that “Java EE 6.”

Lots of reading material for the holidays!