Three months after the release of Seam 1.2.1, Seam 2.0 has been released as beta. . Seam is an application framework for Java EE 5.0 the ties together many Java EE frameworks, such as EJB3, JSF, jBPM, JBoss Rules (Drools), and iText. Seam's stateful design allows those frameworks to interact with each other in ways that simplify the development of a variety of enterprise applications. Among the features listed on lead Gavin King's blog:
- Seam WS allows Seam components to function as Web Service endpoints
- Seam components may now be written in Groovy
- The Seam core is now independent of JSF
- Experimental support for the Google Web Toolkit
- Integration of Hibernate Search
- Introduction of JBoss EL, an extension to the Unified EL of Java EE 5
- Major enhancements to Seam Asynchronicity, including Quartz integration
- Major enhancements to jBPM integration
- Completely reorganized packaging of built-in components
- Migration to JSF 1.2
- Simplified configuration
- Support for pageflow composition
- Enhancements to the integration testing framework
- New transaction abstraction layer with support for non-JTA environments
- Enhanced JavaDoc
- Two new example applications
- Migration to the new Embedded JBoss
- Seam JSF controls reimplemented using Ajax4JSF CDK
- Bugfixes
Earlier this week RedHat open sourced the plugins of Exadel Studio Pro which include Seam support. InfoQ has an indepth article introducing Seam by Michael Yuan, as well as two interviews with Gavin King about previous Seam releases and what Seam is.