Mark Fisher's presentation provided an excellent introduction to Spring for beginners and also covered many of the newer advanced features for existing users. Mark explained the basic rationale behind Spring and demonstrated how easy it was to use. Unlike Enterprise Java Beans, Spring doesn't require a container but it can be used in an EJB application. As a result, Spring can be invoked from a main method. Mark covered the new annotation features as well as AspectJ support. Since Java SIG meetings usually run over, the meeting was split in half with an advanced discussion following the raffle. The advanced discussion delved into support for webservices, RMI, deployment issues etc. This portion of the meeting was driven by attendee questions.

Abstract

The Spring Framework enables developers to focus on business logicÊrather than application "plumbing". Its lightweight containerÊconfigures and assembles an application's components so thatÊdevelopers do not need to implement and maintain custom factories,Êservice locators, and the like. Spring decouples the infrastructureÊÊfrom the application code thereby providing deployment flexibilityÊÊand testability. Spring can add enterprise services non-invasively byÊÊmeans of declarative configuration. In this presentation, Mark willÊÊdemonstrate how to leverage the Spring container and the Spring APIsÊÊto simplify code, increase productivity, and improve the overallÊÊquality of applications.

Speaker

Mark Fisher is a senior consultant with Interface21, the company behind the Spring Framework. As a developer and architect with experience ranging from the persistence to the web tier, Mark has recently been focused on messaging and integration.

Mark has provided consulting and training services for clients across numerous industries throughout North America including several fortune 500 companies. He has presented sessions on Messaging, ESBs, and Portlets at "No Fluff, Just Stuff" symposiums, the SpringOne conference, and The Spring Experience, and he speaks at user groups around the United States.

Mark holds certifications from IBM, Sun, and Oracle and is co-author of "Semantic Enterprise Content Management" in The Practical Handbook of Internet Computing. He is a contributing author of the forthcoming book, Beginning Spring 2.