THE SPRING FRAMEWORK, release 2.0.3 (March 2007) --------------------------------------------------- http://www.springframework.org 1. INTRODUCTION Spring is a layered Java/J2EE application framework, based on code published in "Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development" by Rod Johnson (Wrox, 2002). Spring includes: * Powerful JavaBeans-based configuration management, applying Inversion-of-Control principles. This makes wiring up applications quick and easy. No more singletons littered throughout your codebase, no more arbitrary properties files: one consistent and elegant approach everywhere. This core bean factory can be used in any environment, from applets to J2EE containers. * Generic abstraction layer for transaction management, allowing for pluggable transaction managers, and making it easy to demarcate transactions without dealing with low-level issues. Generic strategies for JTA and a single JDBC DataSource are included. In contrast to plain JTA or EJB CMT, Spring's transaction support is not tied to J2EE environments. * JDBC abstraction layer that offers a meaningful exception hierarchy (no more pulling vendor codes out of SQLException), simplifies error handling, and greatly reduces the amount of code you'll need to write. You'll never need to write another finally block to use JDBC again. The JDBC-oriented exceptions comply to Spring's generic DAO exception hierarchy. * Integration with JDO, JPA, Hibernate, TopLink, and iBATIS SQL Maps: in terms of resource holders, DAO implementation support, and transaction strategies. First-class Hibernate and JDO support with many IoC convenience features, addressing many typical Hibernate/JDO integration issues. All of these comply to Spring's generic transaction and DAO exception hierarchies. * AOP functionality, fully integrated into Spring configuration management. You can AOP-enable any object managed by Spring, adding aspects such as declarative transaction management. With Spring, you can have declarative transaction management without EJB... even without JTA, if you're using a single database in Tomcat or another web container without JTA support. * Flexible MVC web application framework, built on core Spring functionality. This framework is highly configurable via strategy interfaces, and accommodates multiple view technologies like JSP, Tiles, Velocity, FreeMarker, iText (for PDF), and POI (for Excel). Note that a Spring middle tier can easily be combined with a web tier based on any other web MVC framework, like Struts, WebWork, Tapestry, or JSF. You can use all of Spring's functionality in any J2EE server, and most of it also in non-managed environments. A central focus of Spring is to allow for reusable business and data access objects that are not tied to specific J2EE services. Such objects can be reused across J2EE environments (web or EJB), standalone applications, test environments, etc without any hassle. Spring has a layered architecture; all its functionality builds on lower levels. So you can e.g. use the JavaBeans configuration management without using the MVC framework or AOP support. But if you use the web MVC framework or AOP support, you'll find they build on the configuration framework, so you can apply your knowledge about it immediately. 2. RELEASE INFO The Spring Framework 2.0 requires J2SE 1.3 and J2EE 1.3 (Servlet 2.3, JSP 1.2, JTA 1.0, EJB 2.0). JDK 1.5 is required for building the framework; for the full build including all aspects, AspectJ is required as well. J2EE 1.2 (Servlet 2.2, JSP 1.1) is sufficient when not using Spring's JSP tag libraries or the EJB support. Integration is provided with Log4J 1.2, CGLIB 2.1, Jakarta Commons Attributes 2.1/2.2, AspectJ 5, JMX 1.0/1.2, JCA 1.0/1.5, Hibernate 2.1/3.0/3.1/3.2, TopLink 9.0.4/10.1.3, JDO 1.0/2.0, JPA 1.0, iBATIS SQL Maps 2.1/2.2/2.3, Caucho's Hessian & Burlap 2.1/3.0, JAX-RPC 1.1, Quartz 1.5/1.6, EHCache 1.2, JSTL 1.0/1.1, Velocity 1.4, FreeMarker 2.3, JasperReports 1.2, Struts/Tiles 1.1/1.2/1.3, JSF 1.1/1.2, Jakarta Commons FileUpload 1.1, etc. Basic release contents (~10 MB): * "dist" contains the Spring distribution jar files, as well as a zip of all Java source files * "docs" contains the Spring reference documentation as a PDF file Contents of the "-with-dependencies" distribution (~60 MB): * "dist" contains the Spring distribution jar files, as well as a zip of all Java source files * "docs" contains the Spring reference documentation in PDF and HTML format, as well as the complete API javadocs * "lib" contains all third-party libraries needed for building the framework and/or running the samples * "src" contains the general Java source files for the framework * "mock" contains the general Java source files for Spring's mock and test classes * "test" contains the general Java source files for Spring's test suite * "tiger/src" contains the JDK-1.5-specific Java source files for the framework * "tiger/test" contains the JDK-1.5-specific Java source files for Spring's test suite * "aspectj/src" contains the AspectJ-specific source files for the framework * "aspectj/test" contains the AspectJ-specific source files for Spring's test suite * "samples" contains various demo applications and showcases The "lib" directory is just included in the "-with-dependencies" download. Make sure to download this full distribution ZIP file if you want to run the sample applications and/or build the framework yourself. Ant build scripts for the framework and the samples are provided. The standard samples can be built with the included Ant runtime by invoking the corresponding "build.bat" files (see samples subdirectories). Latest info is available at the public website: http://www.springframework.org Project info at the SourceForge site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/springframework The Spring Framework is released under the terms of the Apache Software License (see license.txt). All libraries included in the "-with-dependencies" download are subject to their respective licenses. This product includes software developed by the Apache Software Foundation (http://www.apache.org). This product includes software developed by Clinton Begin (http://www.ibatis.com). 3. DISTRIBUTION JAR FILES The "dist" directory contains the following distinct jar files for use in applications. Both module-specific jar files and a jar file with all of Spring are provided. The following list specifies the corresponding contents and third-party dependencies. Libraries in brackets are optional, i.e. just necessary for certain functionality. FULL JAR (dist): * "spring" (~2605 KB) - Convenient jar file combining all standard modules (except for Portlet and Hibernate2 support) - Also includes the AOP Alliance interfaces (as a convenience) - Note: Does not include contents of mock jar, aspects jar, spring-portlet jar, and spring-hibernate2 jar! MODULE JARS (dist/modules): * "spring-core" (~175 KB) - Contents: core abstractions and utilities - Dependencies: Commons Logging, (Log4J) * "spring-beans" (~375 KB) - Contents: JavaBeans support, bean container - Dependencies: spring-core, (CGLIB) * "spring-aop" (~295 KB) - Contents: AOP framework, source-level metadata support - Dependencies: spring-core, (spring-beans, AOP Alliance, CGLIB, Commons Attributes) * "spring-context" (~155 KB) - Contents: application context, JNDI support, instrumentation, scheduling, validation - Dependencies: spring-beans, (spring-aop) * "spring-dao" (~125 KB) - Contents: DAO support, transaction infrastructure - Dependencies: spring-core, (spring-aop, spring-context, JTA API) * "spring-jdbc" (~220 KB) - Contents: JDBC support - Dependencies: spring-beans, spring-dao * "spring-support" (~115 KB) - Contents: third-party scheduling support, UI template support, scripting, caching, mail support - Dependencies: spring-context, (spring-jdbc, Quartz, Velocity, FreeMarker, JasperReports, BSH, Groovy, JRuby, EHCache) * "spring-web" (~150 KB) - Contents: web application context, multipart resolver, web utilities - Dependencies: spring-context, Servlet API, (JSP API, JSTL, Commons FileUpload, COS) * "spring-webmvc" (~275 KB) - Contents: framework servlets, web MVC framework, web controllers, web views - Dependencies: spring-web, (spring-support, Tiles, iText, POI) * "spring-portlet" (~115 KB) - Contents: framework portlets, portlet MVC framework, portlet controllers - Dependencies: spring-web, Portlet API, (spring-webmvc) * "spring-struts" (~25 KB) - Contents: Struts support - Dependencies: spring-web, Struts * "spring-remoting" (~110 KB) - Contents: remoting support, EJB support - Dependencies: spring-aop, (spring-context, spring-web, Hessian, Burlap, JAX-RPC, EJB API) * "spring-jca" (~45 KB) - Contents: JCA 1.0/1.5 support - Dependencies: spring-beans, spring-dao, JCA API, (spring-context) * "spring-jms" (~135 KB) - Contents: JMS 1.0.2/1.1 support - Dependencies: spring-beans, spring-dao, JMS API, (spring-remoting) * "spring-jmx" (~85 KB) - Contents: JMX 1.0/1.2 support - Dependencies: spring-beans, spring-aop, JMX API * "spring-jdo" (~60 KB) - Contents: JDO 1.0/2.0 support - Dependencies: spring-jdbc, JDO API, (spring-web) * "spring-jpa" (~95 KB) - Contents: JPA 1.0 support - Dependencies: spring-jdbc, JPA API, (spring-web) * "spring-hibernate2" (~85 KB) - Contents: Hibernate 2.1 support (superseded) - Dependencies: spring-jdbc, Hibernate2, (spring-web) * "spring-hibernate3" (~105 KB) - Contents: Hibernate 3.0/3.1/3.2 support - Dependencies: spring-jdbc, Hibernate3, (spring-web) * "spring-toplink" (~55 KB) - Contents: TopLink support - Dependencies: spring-jdbc, TopLink * "spring-ibatis" (~25 KB) - Contents: iBATIS SQL Maps support - Dependencies: spring-jdbc, iBATIS SQL Maps MOCK JAR (dist) * "spring-mock" (~100 KB) - Contents: JNDI mocks, Servlet API mocks, Portlet API mocks, JUnit support - Dependencies: spring-core ASPECTS JAR (dist) * "spring-aspects" (~15 KB) - Contents: AspectJ aspects, for explicitly linking aspects into an IDE (Eclipse AJDT) - Dependencies: spring-aop, AspectJ, (spring-dao) WEAVER JARS (dist/weavers) * "spring-agent" (~5 KB) - Contents: Spring's InstrumentationSavingAgent (for InstrumentationLoadTimeWeaver) - Dependencies: none (for use at JVM startup: "-javaagent:spring-agent.jar") * "spring-tomcat-weaver" (~5 KB) - Contents: extension of Tomcat's ClassLoader, capable of class instrumentation - Dependencies: none (for deployment into Tomcat's "server/lib" directory) Note: To use the JSP expression language for arguments of Spring's web MVC tags, JSP 2.0 is required. Alternatively, the Jakarta implementation of the JSTL (standard.jar) has to be available on the class path. 4. WHERE TO START? Documentation can be found in the "docs" directory (depending on distribution zip): * the Spring reference documentation * the Spring MVC step-by-step tutorial Documented sample applications can be found in "samples" (depending on distribution zip): * countries * imagedb * jpetstore * petclinic * (showcases) PetClinic features alternative DAO implementations and application configurations for JDBC, Hibernate, Oracle TopLink and JPA, with HSQLDB and MySQL as target databases. The default PetClinic configuration is JDBC on HSQL, which also demonstrates Spring's JMX export through exposing the CachingClinic management interface. To to be able to build and run the Hibernate and JPA versions, the Spring distribution comes with all required jar files; for TopLink, the full jars need to be downloaded (see PetClinic's readme.txt). The Spring JPetStore is an adapted version of Clinton Begin's JPetStore (available from http://www.ibatis.com). It leverages Spring's support for the iBATIS SQL Maps to improve the original JPetStore in terms of internal structure and wiring. On top of a Spring-managed middle tier, it offers two alternative web tier implementations: one using Spring's web MVC plus JSTL, and one using Struts 1.2 plus JSTL. Furthermore, it illustrates remoting via 5 different strategies: Hessian, Burlap, HTTP invoker, RMI invoker, and JAX-RPC. The Image Database sample is a simple one-screen image management web app that illustrates various Spring-integrated technologies: C3P0 as connection pool, BLOB/CLOB handling with MySQL and Oracle, Velocity and FreeMarker for web views, scheduling via Quartz and Timer, and mail sending via JavaMail.