Beginning Spring Framework 2

Developing server-side applications with Java Enterprise Edition can be complex and time consuming. The Spring Framework is designed from the ground up to make it easier than ever. With this book as your guide, you quickly learn how to use the latest features of Spring 2 and other open-source tools, such as JUnit, Ant, and Hibernate, that can be downloaded for free on the web.

With this book you hit the ground running and work with a server-side Spring example within the first chapter. You become quickly familiarized with the technology pieces and the lingo of Spring 2 that facilitate creation of Java server applications. In each subsequent chapter, you explore in more depth a fundamental area of Spring application design and development by walking through the steps involved in building a larger production-scale example.

What you will learn from this book

• How to utilize the Spring 2 Framework and associated APIs in building your applications
• How to implement core best practices including inversion of control, dependency injection, and aspect oriented programming
• How to code and test POJO (Plain Old Java Object) centric design and development, enabling business logic
• How to support data access to and from relational database servers using the Java Persistence API (JPA)
• How to create maintainable Java server applications that decouple the user interface from the business logic by using Spring MVC
• How to create applications that generate RSS for web syndication, and PDFs for portable reports
• How to build Web Services interoperability features that enable your server applications to exchange data and information with Microsoft .NET based systems
• How to improve system robustness by adding transactional support to Spring applications

This book is for Java developers who want to build server-side applications utilizing the Spring Framework and associated open-source tools. Developers already working with existing J2EE or Java EE servers will also find useful information on techniques in transitioning to the lightweight Spring Framework.

About the Authors

Thomas Van de Velde has extensive experience developing high-traffic public-facing web sites across a wide range of industries. As a consultant and project manager for one of the leading global technology consulting firms, he has worked on delivering the French online tax declaration and one of the United States’ largest sports sites. Thomas is passionate about finding ways to leverage open source in the enterprise.

Bruce Snyder is a veteran of enterprise software development and a recognized leader in open-source software. Bruce has experience in a wide range of technologies including Java EE, messaging, and service-oriented architecture. In addition to his role as a principal engineer for IONA Technologies, Bruce is also a founding member of Apache Geronimo and a developer for Apache ActiveMQ, Apache ServiceMix, and Castor, among other things. Bruce serves as a member of various JCP expert groups and is the co-author of Professional Apache Geronimo from Wrox Press. Bruce is also a frequent speaker at industry conferences, including the Colorado Software Summit, TheServerSide Java Symposium, Java in Action, JavaOne, ApacheCon, JAOO, SOA Web Services Edge, No Fluff Just Stuff, and various Java users groups.

Christian Dupuis is working for one of the world’s leading consulting companies and is a member of the Technical Architecture capability group. Christian has been working as a technical architect and implementation lead to design and implement multi-channel, mission-critical financial applications that leverage Spring and other open-source frameworks across all tiers. Christian is co-lead of the Spring IDE open-source project, providing tool support for the Spring Portfolio.

Sing Li (who was bitten by the microcomputer bug in the late 1970s) has grown up in the Microprocessor Age. His first personal computer was a $99 do-it-yourself Netronics COSMIC ELF computer with 256 bytes of memory, mail-ordered from the back pages of Popular Electronics magazine. A 25-year industry veteran, Sing is a system developer, open-source software contributor, and freelance writer specializing in Java technology and embedded and distributed systems architecture. He regularly writes for several popular technical journals and e-zines, and is the creator of the Internet Global Phone, one of the very first Internet phones available. He has authored and co-authored a number of books across diverse technical disciplines including Geronimo, Tomcat, JSP, servlets, XML, Jini, media streaming, device drivers, and JXTA.

Anne Horton has worked in the software industry for 24 years as a software engineer, textbook technical editor, author, and Java architect. She currently works for Lockheed Martin and spends her weekends working with Sing Li (author) and Sydney Jones (editor) in developing bleeding-edge books such as this one.

Naveen Balani works as an architect with IBM India Software Labs (ISL). He leads the design and development activities for the WebSphere Business Service Fabric product out of ISL. He likes to research upcoming technologies and is a regular contributor to IBM developer works covering such topics as web services, ESB, JMS, SOA, architectures, open-source frameworks, semantic web, J2ME, persuasive computing, the Spring series, AJAX, and various IBM products.