SpringOne Keynote

I am at SpringOne in Florida. As always it is nice to be out of the cold and in a nice hotel. Food is good, content is great. Good times.

Now for some news. Rod Johnson did an opening night keynote. Very informative and nicely presented as always. Major take away: SpringSource stands for "Creative destruction of complexity" and Spring Framework provides "Weapons for the war on Java complexity". So now you are warned!

I will not try to reproduce it all. Here and here have a great write-up already.

Biggest announcement has to be a new tc Server. Basically Tomcat with integrated AMS and great management console. That should open up a number of doors for SpringSource. I have been in a number of engagement where BEA and IBM servers were used only because they provided a much better operational environment. Will be interesting to see what SpringSource guys will come up with next.

At Philadelphia Spring User Group we will be doing a SpringOne redux on December 10th. So if you in the area come check it out. We will cover all of the announcements and happenings. phillyspring.org for information.

Comparing MVC Frameworks?

I saw a question on one of LinkedIn groups asking for a comparison of MVC frameworks. Obvious reaction is to point to Matt Raible's presentation from 2007 on this topic. Thinking further brings up an "It Depends" moment. Now days it is not enough to just use "best" MVC framework.

• Is this a green field project, i.e. do you have any legacy code to integrate?
• What type of application is this going to be?
• Is there need for wizards with suspend/restart functionality?
  
• What are you using for persistence?
• Do you have need for DI container?
• Is there a need for "flashy" desktop feel to the application?
• What is experience level of developers who will develop this application?
  

Those and other questions must be considered before making a decision on presentation framework. UI is only one, albeit very important, part of the system architecture. Care must be taken to pick a UI technology that compliments and plays nice with other pieces of overall system.

Before jumping in bed with a framework make sure that development staff is comfortable and understands underlying technology, i.e. does not have to be retrained. Make sure that picked technology fits with a business direction/objectives/strategy few years in a future. Don't get caught up in a short term trends or you will suffer pains of complete rewrite when business focus changes.

SpringSource dm Server with Rob Harrop

Just a quick announcement. Philadelphia Spring User Group will be hosting Rob Harrop of SpringSource fame. He will be presenting on recently blessed SpringSource dm Server. This is the one that is all OSGi inside and out. Very cool stuff.
Rob is one of the best technology speakers out there. If you are insterest in OSGi, SpringDM and SpringSource dm Server, this is the presentation for you.

Check out http://phillyspring.org for details.

Change of course at SpringSource

Glad to see an announcement from Rod. Honestly, what took so long?

We are amending our maintenance policy in the light of community feedback. We will make regular binary releases from the Spring trunk available to the community, with no 3 month window. For each version of Spring, community releases will be available while it remains the trunk or until the next version is stable.

Once we have published a release candidate for a new version of a project, we will typically not release further tags or binary builds of earlier versions of the project to the open source community. Such releases will be available for three years to SpringSource Enterprise customers.

This is the type of a policy that I would be completely comfortable with. Initial version seemed a little out of character and rushed. Call me a "Spring Fan Boy" but I am mighty happy with the news today.