InfoQ has a discussion thread summarizing the reactions to the announcement of the SpringSource Application Plaform. Michael Burke asked a great question on that thread which can be paraphrased as "forgetting the hype surrounding OSGi, what benefits can I expect to see if I port an application currently packaged as an EAR to OSGi bundles?".
I […]

It's been great to hear so much discussion on the SpringSource Application Platform, online and on the floor here at JavaOne. One of the most insightful comments is from WebSphere transaction architect Ian Robinson:
Does any of this affect WebSphere? Well, nothing has changed in the core Spring framework. Regardless of what the future holds for […]

The SpringSource Application Platform is constructed from OSGi bundles and supports applications which are also constructed from OSGi bundles. The Platform supports the standard features of OSGi, but it also supports some additional manifest headers. Several people have asked Why did SpringSource add proprietary headers? and What are the semantics of the new headers?, so […]

Since we released the SpringSource Application Platform last Wednesday, numerous developers have downloaded the 1.0.0 beta and started taking the Platform for a test drive. As a result, people have begun asking, "How can I deploy my apps on the Platform, and what kind of deployment and packaging options do I have?" Moreover, developers are […]

A lot of people have been asking what exactly the SpringSource Application Platform does for Spring applications to make them run well under OSGi, over and above what you can get out of the box with OSGi and Spring Dynamic Modules. Adrian's post yesterday highlighted some of the general issues, now lets look at a […]

** Updated May 2nd with case study :- see the bottom of this post for details **
I'm sure most of you reading this blog will have seen the announcement of the SpringSource Application Platform yesterday. If not, be sure to check out Rob's blog post which describes some of the motivation, programming model, and […]

After many months of feverish coding, I am pleased to announce the beta release of the SpringSource Application Platform 1.0.
At the beginning of 2007 we began discussing possible alternatives to the monolithic and heavyweight application servers with which Enterprise Java has become synonymous. Customers were looking for a platform that was lightweight, modular and flexible […]

Yesterday, I blogged about how Spring helps maximize application portability. Even if the portability problem has been an ongoing topic in enterprise Java land for many years, that blog was timely. Today, Oracle announced that its $6.7 billion acquisition of BEA Systems has closed. There is substantial overlap between the product sets of the two […]

Since the first milestones of Spring Dynamic Modules, requests for running web applications in OSGi started to come in. It has been probably one of the most requested features and no wonder, once 1.0 final was released, web support has been the main focus of the 1.1 branch. I am pleased to report that, with […]

Portability is a key factor in the Spring universe. We believe in portability at the framework level: Application components are written against a specific framework (or framework generation), such as Spring 2.5; the framework is then in turn responsible for adapting onto any underlying hosting environment. However, the specific application framework is above and distinct […]