Hello everybody,

Spring Framework 1.0 M4 has just been released. Due to the introduction of significant new features, we have decided to release another milestone. Finally, the next release will be 1.0 RC1.

Beginning with this release, we offer two distributions for download:
- spring-framework-1.0-m4.zip
- spring-framework-1.0-m4-with-dependencies.zip

Both distributions contain all sources, tests, samples, build scripts, and docs. The difference is that "-with-dependencies" contains all third party libraries necessary for building the samples and the framework itself. Of course, the distributions still contain pre-built JAR files.

The most important new features are:
- an abstraction of file-based resources, to replace String location properties with Resource properties
- factored-out Xml/Properties/Jdbc-BeanDefinitionReaders, working on DefaultListableBeanFactory
- support for CGLIB2 in the AOP framework (replacing CGLIB1)
- support for source-level metadata driving AOP, with a default implementation for Commons Attributes
- reworked transaction synchronization that also affects PROPAGATION_SUPPORTS
- new NativeJdbcExtractor and LobHandler mechanisms in the JDBC support
- support for iBATIS Database Layer, similar to the existing support for Hibernate and JDO
- refined remoting support for Hessian/Burlap/RMI and EJB
- support for JAX-RPC, similar to the existing support for Hessian, Burlap, and RMI
- our version of the iBATIS JPetStore, with ibatis-db for data access and alternative Spring/Struts web tiers

There are also a couple of new features regarding Hibernate support:
- support for Hibernate 2.1 (still compatible with Hibernate 2.0 as far as possible)
- new OpenSessionInViewInterceptor and OpenSessionInViewFilter
- JtaTransactionManager will now properly use ThreadLocal Sessions even with EJB CMT

As always, see the changelog for details.

Regards,
Juergen

Is there any examples for using the new OpenSessionInViewInterceptor and OpenSessionInViewFilter , particularly with Struts or JSF.

OpenSessionInViewFilter is a standard Servlet 2.3 Filter that can be used with any web tier, to be mapped in web.xml for all resources that need an open Hibernate Session in the view. For Spring's web MVC, OpenSessionInViewInterceptor is the way to go, because it can much more conveniently be mapped in a Spring HandlerMapping instead of in the otherwise unaffected web.xml file.

By default, OpenSessionInViewFilter looks up a "sessionFactory" bean in the root web application context: Obviously, it needs a SessionFactory to create thread-bound Sessions with. If your SessionFactory bean is named differently, specify a corresponding "sessionFactoryBeanName" init-param on the filter. See OpenSessionInViewFilter's javadoc for details.

Note that transactions demarcated in your business layer will still get applied as usual even with an OpenSessionInViewFilter. However, Hibernate Sessions will not be scoped per transactions but rather per request (which can potentially span multiple transactions), to be closed at the end of view rendering. This can have side effects if you have transaction recovery code or the like, although it won't in typical cases.

Juergen