SpringOne Brings a New Tomcat Server, VMware Partnership, and ActionScript Offerings

The annual North American version of the SpringOne conference recently wrapped up with a number of high profile announcements and new features being revealed. Overall, the conference featured both a continuation of SpringSource's enterprise product offerings and a preview of where the Spring Framework and associated ecosystem will be headed in 2009.

SpringSource tcServer - Headlining the enterprise announcements at SpringOne was the unveiling of the new tcServer:

...SpringSource tc Server includes Apache Tomcat, enhanced operational management capabilities and advanced server and application diagnostics. The server is packaged and certified on a wide variety of environments, and supported by enterprise-level, mission-critical support. SpringSource tc Server provides centralized management and monitoring of an organization’s Tomcat server farm from a single console view. This includes the ability to define Tomcat server groups, deploy/start/stop/undeploy applications individually or across a server group as well as to start and stop the Tomcat servers themselves. Tomcat server configuration allows control of the complete operations lifecycle of the Tomcat servers from a single console. The management capabilities also enable monitoring and control of other versions of Tomcat (for example, those that have been deployed before implementing tc Server). SpringSource tc Server provides advanced diagnostics, such as deadlock detection and incremental tracing, delivering rapid problem identification and troubleshooting. These diagnostics, upon the occurrence of a failure, capture tracing, dump and thread information from the servers for swift diagnosis, isolation and repair of runtime issues...

The announcement of the tcServer is not unexpected given SpringSource's acquisition of Covalent earlier this year. eWeek notes that 80% of Tomcat project commits the last 2 years are from SpringSource employees.

Spring IDE 2.2.1 - Also released at SpringOne was a new version of the Spring IDE.

SpringSource/VMWare - An announcement that may bear fruit across a number of avenues is a new partnership between SpringSource and VMWare:

...The collaboration with VMware, a SpringSource Certified Solutions Partner, includes integration between SpringSource Tool Suite, an Eclipse-powered development environment for building enterprise applications using the Spring Portfolio, and VMware Workstation to enable the dynamic creation of virtual machines on the developer’s desktop ... The collaboration also includes joint development of two open source application server virtual images, the SpringSource tc Server and dm Server virtual images, enabling the portability of enterprise Java applications across desktop and data center virtualization environments. SpringSource dm Server is a completely modular, OSGi-based Java server designed to run enterprise Java applications and Spring-powered applications with a new degree of flexibility and reliability. SpringSource tc Server is the enterprise version of Apache Tomcat, the most widely used Java application server, hardened for enterprise use and coupled with mission-critical operational capabilities and support that systems administrators require. All of these initiatives will be part of a future announcement between VMware and SpringSource around VMware’s vCloud ... SpringSource Tool Suite integration with VMware Workstation enables development and QA professionals to specify virtual server configurations for different development and test scenarios. These virtual appliances allow developers to select a variety of build targets with different operating systems and application server configurations without needing additional physical hardware. Virtual appliance configuration, deployment and debugging are integrated with the SpringSource Tool Suite and ready to use virtual images are provided for dm Server, tc Server and Apache Tomcat ... The first SpringSource/VMware commercial offerings will be available in January 2009.

As the excerpts from the press release indicate, IDE and virtual machine integration appears to be on the roadmap for 2009. The official VMWare workstation blog also comments on the partnership and alludes to previous Eclipse integration that was prototyped in years past. 

Spring/Adobe - The Spring ecosystem continued to broaden at SpringOne with two key Flex related announcements. The Prana framework was officially renamed Spring Actionscript. As part of the move the project gains official SpringFramework.org forums, JIRA access, and Fisheye integration. SpringSource also announced a partnership with Adobe integrating Spring with BlazeDS:

...A new open source project, Spring BlazeDS Integration will provide tight integration between Spring and BlazeDS, Adobe’s open source server-based Java remoting and web messaging technology. This integration project will be a key component of the Spring Web family of technologies ... The SpringSource Adapter for Adobe Flex will provide integration with Adobe® LiveCycle® Data Services ES for Adobe Flex® that will enable the creation of server push–based applications for real-time and near real-time solutions. The SpringSource Adapter for Flex will be available to SpringSource Enterprise customers as part of their subscription...

The official support comes on the heels of community efforts to integrate Spring and Spring Security with BlazeDS.

Spring Integration 1.0 - Recently covered by InfoQ, Spring Integration 1.0 was released. Spring Integration includes support for the most commonly used transports, like JMS, web services, file, RMI, etc, with other options like FTP being contributed from the community via Spring Extensions.

Spring 3.0 M1 - The announcement with likely the most impact for architects in 2009 was the unveiling of Spring 3.0 M1. From Juergen Hoeller's official blog: 

• revised project layout and build system with module-based sources
• updated entire codebase for Java 5 code style (generics, varargs)
• updated to JUnit 4.5 and JRuby 1.1
• introduced Spring EL parser (org.springframework.expression package)
• introduced support for #{…} expressions in bean definitions
• introduced expression-enabled @Value annotation for embedded expressions
• introduced @PathVariable annotation for URI template handling in MVC handlers
• introduced default value support for @RequestParam in MVC handlers
• introduced @RequestHeader annotation for HTTP header access in MVC handlers
• introduced AbstractAtomFeedView and AbstractRssFeedView base classes
• introduced and JSP tags

Spring 3.0 will require Java 5+. Blogger Willie Wheeler has written a roundup of the announcement and sessions on the milestone. Part1 Part2

General Thoughts from the Blogsphere The blogsphere was also active in their coverage of SpringOne. Blogger Solomon Duskis provides a good roundup on themes noting enterprise items such as tcServer, maturing of Spring DM, continued cooperation between Spring and the JCP, and an evolution of industry heavyweights joining SpringSource. Other coverage:

All
http://springinpractice.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/rod-johnsons-keynote-address-at-springone-americas-2008/
http://www.jroller.com/Solomon/entry/spring_one_random_thoughts_and

Day 1
http://www.i-proving.ca:80/space/Alec+Ho/blog/2008-12-04_1
http://ptrthomas.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/springone-2008-day-1/
http://greybeardedgeek.net/?p=66

Day 2
http://ptrthomas.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/springone-2008-day-2/
http://greybeardedgeek.net/?p=71

Day 3
http://ptrthomas.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/springone-2008-day-3/
http://greybeardedgeek.net/?p=83
http://greybeardedgeek.net/?p=88

Day 4
http://ptrthomas.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/springone-2008-day-4/