Dear Spring Community, We're pleased to announce the availability of Spring Web Flow 2.1.0 M1. Download | Change Log This release is built on Spring 3.0.2, Spring Security 3.0.2, Tiles 2.1.2, and Portlet API 2.0. It features use of Spring EL as the default expression language as well as integration with the new type conversion and formatting system available in Spring 3. The 2.1.0 release will have two milestones with the first release candidate scheduled for two weeks from today. Feedback and comments at this point are welcome.

In Spring 2.5 it is possible to use annotations to configure all parts of a web application. Seeing annotations applied is particularly interesting in the Web layer where developers traditionally rely on the SimpleFormController and the MultiActionController for form page handling. The introduction of annotations has created a third option, one that does not require a base class while still offering the flexibility of previous approaches. While it is easy to see the elegance in using annotated POJOs to implement Controllers, the benefit is not as clear in the area of URL-to-Controller…

Load testing a Web Flow application is similar to load testing any other web application – we'll use a load testing tool to simulate increasing levels of concurrent client access in order to capture essential performance statistics. With Web Flow there will be a couple of important considerations for the load test: Apache JMeter is an open-source performance test tool that can satisfy both considerations. For 1) we add an HTTP Cookie Manager element at the root of each Test Group exercising Web Flow functionality. The Cookie Manager ensures each simulated client request can have its own…

This happened in Atlanta last week while I was in a Barnes & Noble bookstore. I circled around to the computer section and began scanning titles. With my head tilted I overheard a conversation about a job. I wasn't actively listening but I knew one side was pitching a job while the other was inquiring about it. A couple of minutes later it was just me and the guy who was looking for talent. I was sure he would start speaking. Soon after he said 'so you're in J2EE?' and so the conversation began. He asked me about my work. He didn't know about Interface21 but upon hearing it's the company…