The Spring Framework re-invented enterprise Java in the last decade, becoming the dominant programming model in enterprise Java. Today we are releasing Spring Framework 4.0, a brand new major version of Spring that keeps Spring at the cutting edge of modern Java development. Together with the rest of the upcoming Spring IO Platform, Spring Framework 4.0 is positioned to empower the next decade of JVM based innovation, responding to, and setting trends in Developer Productivity, Big Data, Cloud, REST, and Micro Service Architecture. Spring Framework 4.0 works beautifully with Java 8 and also…

By now you’ve probably heard about Pivotal. I’d like to take a moment here to explain what this means for Spring, and to tell you about some of our plans for 2013. In case you missed it, here’s the essential background on Pivotal: Led by Paul Maritz, the initiative unites key people and projects from across EMC and VMware to bring “consumer grade” technology to the enterprise. We see a new generation of applications emerging that are powered by new data fabrics and will interact with and serve customers in the context of who they are, where they are, and what they are doing in the moment…

Today we will be releasing version 2.0 of the dm server. This represents a major milestone for the project, and for enterprise application development with OSGi in general. I’m delighted to now be able to reveal the next step in the dm Server journey: we have submitted a proposal at Eclipse.org to continue development of the dm Server as part of the Eclipse RT top-level project. The Eclipse nickname for the project is Virgo. Quick links: The follow-on release of dm Server will be developed and released from Eclipse.org. We set out with a vision to make modular application development a reality…

This week the Gemini project proposal was unveiled at Eclipse.org. Gemini is part of the Eclipse RT (runtime) project which is "designed to foster, promote and house runtime efforts in Eclipse, on the basis of the Equinox framework and OSGi" (Eclipse RT mission statement). Gemini itself is an umbrella project bringing together a collection of modules designed for enterprise application development. SpringSource and Oracle are the first two companies providing committers to the project, and several other companies have expressed interest in joining too. The initial projects being contributed to…

If you want to understand at a strategic level what the implications of VMware’s recently announced acquisition of SpringSource are, there are several good sources, including Steve Herrod’s (CTO of VMware) blog post, Rod Johnson’s commentary, Paul Maritz’s press and analyst call, and Darryl Taft’s insightful piece in eWeek. In this post I will focus more on what this all means at a technical level, to give you an idea of the kinds of capabilities you can look forward to. Firstly, let me reiterate that nothing changes with respect to our open source projects and  SpringSource product offerings…

In a press release made available by the OSGi Alliance yesterday, several leading vendors including SpringSource, IBM, Oracle, RedHat, Sun, SAP, ProSyst, and Paremus joined forces in their support of OSGi as the foundation for next generation server platforms. To highlight some of the key points: Craig Hayman, VP IBM WebSphere said You need to look a bit harder at the various vendor offerings to determine to what extent they have been able to realize those benefits for you as a user. At SpringSource you could say we were "lucky" in this respect. We had the good fortune to be able to design the…

The OSGi Alliance have posted an early draft of release 4.2 of the Service Platform specification.  SpringSource employees are active members of both the Core Platform Expert Group (CPEG) and the Enterprise Expert Group (EEG) within the Alliance. My personal involvement has been largely with the EEG, and particularly with RFC 124 "A Component Model for OSGi". RFC 124 is a standardization of the core ideas behind Spring Dynamic Modules. If you look at the configuration schema, you'll see that it very closely resembles the "osgi" namespace provided by Spring Dynamic Modules (DM).  RFC 124 takes…

InfoQ has a discussion thread summarizing the reactions to the announcement of the SpringSource Application Plaform. Michael Burke asked a great question on that thread which can be paraphrased as "forgetting the hype surrounding OSGi, what benefits can I expect to see if I port an application currently packaged as an EAR to OSGi bundles?". I started answering this question on the InfoQ thread, but my answer was growing too long for a comment so instead I'll address it here. The question is a good one. The main difference you will see in an OSGi-based application versus a traditional JEE EAR…

** Updated May 2nd with case study :- see the bottom of this post for details ** I'm sure most of you reading this blog will have seen the announcement of the SpringSource Application Platform yesterday. If not, be sure to check out Rob's blog post which describes some of the motivation, programming model, and roadmap. A couple of common questions are being asked that I'd like to address straight away in this post. After that I'll describe two other exciting announcements that complement the SpringSource Application Platform itself but that didn't grab the headlines yesterday: the…