Developing enterprise applications isn't easy. You not only have to worry about constantly evolving business logic, but also need to address infrastructure concerns ranging from transaction management and security to manageability and integration with diverse external applications. Spring, the most popular lightweight enterprise application framework, comes to the rescue by simplifying the common needs of enterprise applications. This session (part 1 of 2) presents the core concepts of the Spring Framework.

In this session we discuss the motivations behind the Spring approach to creating enterprise applications. We cover the core ideas such as POJOs, dependency injection, container configuration, testing, and aspect-oriented programming. We also show how all of these concepts work together using a simple application. By the end of this session, you will have a clear idea of what Spring is and what it can do for you.

This session (part 2 of 2) will cover advanced concepts in the Spring framework. While the core concepts in the first session will get you started with Spring, the advanced concepts in this session will help you be more effective at developing Spring-based applications.

In this session, you will learn how to use Spring effectively across a wide range of technical areas such as persistence, transactions, web applications, remoting, manageability, and messaging. By the end of this session, you will be ready to start using Spring to build enterprise applications - or if you have already started using Spring, you should be able to do so more effectively.

In this session, we will take a deep-dive into annotation-based dependency injection with Spring 2.5. You will learn how to combine annotation and XML formats, how to customize component scanning, and how to leverage Java 6 annotations within a Spring application. Since there is no "one size fits all" solution to application configuration, we will wrap up the discussion with general guidelines to consider when employing this approach.

Although XML is the most widely used format for Spring configuration, other options do exist including properties files, Spring's Java Configuration, and even Groovy builders. Spring 2.5 adds to this mix with support for Java's @Resource annotation and Spring's @Autowired annotation. Spring 2.5 also supports classpath scanning for Spring components. This session will provide a comprehensive overview of these new Spring 2.5 features for annotation-based configuration.

Spring Security (formerly known as 'Acegi') enables self-contained, consistent, and extensible solutions for securing your applications. Version 2.0 provides major enhancements including a domain-specific XML namespace, convention-based defaulting, and annotation support. This provides a significantly simpler experience for developers while still supporting the same degree of flexibility.

Spring Security's interceptor-based approach is non-invasive even when extended to accommodate domain-specific requirements. The two main security processes (authentication and authorization) are decoupled in order to provide flexibility across a wide variety of providers and strategies. This presentation will include an overview of Spring Security's pluggable authentication process and how it accommodates a wide range of possibilities including Database, LDAP, Single Sign On, and even an in-memory option for development and testing. We will then proceed to cover authorization where you will see its consistent approach for securing web requests and method invocations. Throughout the session, we will walk through a sample application that demonstrates Spring Security's core features.

The first part of this two-part session will focus on the essentials of Enterprise Integration with Spring. The discussion will cover the enterprise integration support libraries in the Spring Framework core within the context of well-established design principles such as loose coupling and separation of concerns.

The presentation is driven by examples that progressively extend an application with various integration capabilities such as remoting, messaging, scheduling, and management. Attendees will leave with a clear understanding of Spring's core integration support and an appreciation for the benefits of using Spring's dependency injection, templates, and proxies. After this session, you will be fully prepared to explore Spring Integration, a new addition to the Spring portfolio, in Part 2.

The second part of this two-part session will introduce Spring Integration, a new addition to the Spring portfolio. We will begin with a high-level overview of Enterprise Integration Patterns as catalogued in the highly influential book of the same name. We will then embark on a demo-driven exploration of Spring Integration to see how it enables the development of applications based on those patterns.

Patterns we will discuss include Message Channel, Channel Adapter, Message Endpoint, Content-Based Router, Message Translator, and more. We will also take an in-depth look at the APIs so that you will understand how to provide extensions while maintaining the separation of concerns that is essential for producing maintainable, testable code.