Welcome to this final Countdown to Grails 2.0 post: the final release is imminent! I'm not really going to say much here because some of the most interesting new features of Grails 2.0 are much better seen. For that reason, I've created a screencast so you can see exactly what awaits you when you install Grails 2.0 for the first time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJMR0gB6NHk

The key aspects are:

• a whole new interactive console;
• better automatic class reloading, including support for domain classes and Java files;
• enhanced error reporting;
• new HTML 5 scaffolding; and
• new test reports.

As shown in the screencast, the new interactive console comes with: auto-completion on commands; execution of external applications using "bang" (!) commands; a command history buffer; and easy access to test and dependency reports. This is backed up by a much improved reloading mechanism for Grails classes. You don't need to restart run-app…

Today saw the release of the Spring framework, version 3.1, the next step in enterprise Java development.

  	There is a <EM>lot</EM> of other stuff to talk about this week, but we'll
  	forego them for next week, because there's quite simply too much to look at with Spring 3.1.  

  	Take a look at the following content, and don't forget to download (<A href="http://www.springsource.com/download/community?project=Spring%20Framework&version=3.1.0.RELEASE">direct</a> or <a href="http://www.springsource.org/spring-core#download">maven</a>) and try out the latest and greatest bits today! 
 

And, of course, for all the gritty details of what's new, check out the Spring Framework 3.1 release notes.

Among my favorite new features in this release:

<ul> <LI>
Comprehensive Java-based application configuration</LI>
</LI> <lI>New caching abstraction
</LI…

It is my pleasure to announce that Spring Framework 3.1 becomes generally available today! This release delivers several key features that make Spring ready for the challenges of 2012 and beyond:

• The environment abstraction and the associated bean definition profiles, along with centrally configurable property sources for placeholder resolution.

• Java-based application configuration based on @Enable* annotations on configuration classes, allowing for convenient container configuration: e.g. using @EnableTransactionManagement to activate declarative transaction processing.

• The cache abstraction with our declarative caching solution (@Cacheable etc) on top, focusing on convenient interaction between application code and cache providers.

• The Servlet 3.0 based WebApplicationInitializer mechanism for bootstrapping a Spring web application without web.xml! This is a key piece in Spring's web configuration story, providing a rich alternative to XML-based bootstrapping.

  …

Spring Integration scripting support, available in the 2.1 release, builds upon the Groovy scripting support introduced in 2.0.  If you are familiar with Spring Integration, consider scripting support as another tool in your toolbox that you will find useful in certain situations.  If you have existing code written in languages such as Groovy, Python, Ruby, or Javascript and need to integrate them with each other or into a Java application,  Spring Integration provides a simple way to do this.  Whatever the case, this post covers the basics to get you started using your favorite scripting…

Welcome back to another installment of This Week in Spring.

     We're in December, folks. I just can't believe that it's already December. 

Um, OK, ignore me.
Just astonished. Let's get into the roundup because there is a lot of new content this week.

1. Did you miss SpringOne? Well, that's a shame. You missed out on a lot. However, don't fret, our friends at InfoQ are riding to the rescue with a steady stream of videos from the different talks at SpringOne2GX. The first two talks on the docket? The opening keynote with SpringSource CTO Adrian Colyer, SpringOne 2Gx Keynote - Spring, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.

   		On day two, <a href= "http://www.springsource.org/node/3322">Ben Alex lead the SpringOne 2GX technical keynote</a>, a procession of 
   		  demonstrations and thought provoking insights into next generation application development with Spring and on the cloud.
   		
   		 </LI> 
   		
   		
   		<LI> <a href = "http://www.twitter.com/ramnivas">Ramnivas Laddad</a>, all around great guy and one of the brilliant, mad…

It's been a while since the last Countdown blog post, but the release of 2.0.0.RC3 gives me a good reason to write another. In the last post, I focused on database migration and how we are standardising on the new Database Migration Plugin. I'll be continuing on the theme of persistence here and introducing several great new features, particularly around querying.

Miscellaneous

Let's start with some of the minor improvements. First, abstract domain classes are now treated as most people would expect: an abstract base domain class results in a table for it and its subclasses. For example, consider the…

In this short article we look at Cross Site Request Forgery in the context of OAuth2, looking at possible attacks and how they can be countered when OAuth2 is being used to protect web resources.

OAuth2 is a protocol enabling a Client application, often a web application, to act on behalf of a User, but with the User’s permission. The actions a Client is allowed to perform are carried out on a Resource Server (another web application or web service), and the User approves the actions by telling an Authorization Server that he trusts the Client to do what it is asking. Common examples of Authorization Servers on the internet are Facebook and Google, both of which also provide Resource Servers (the Graph API in the case…

Welcome back to another installment of This Week in Spring. There's a lot to talk about this week as well as a bevy of new releases, so let's get right to it!

1. Chris Beams has announced the latest and greatest release of Spring 3.1, RC2. This is the intended final release so get the bits and try it out soon. For a tour of what's what in Spring 3.1, check out the release notes and the Spring 3.1 blog series

 <LI> 
	The steady march to Spring Integration 2.1 GA continues. This week, <A href= "http://www.springsource.org/node/3315">Spring Integration 2.1 RC1  was  released</a>.  
There are a lot of new features in  Spring Integration 2.1, including support for GemFire, RabbitMQ, MongoDB, and much, much, more.  For the full details, <a href="https://jira.springsource.org/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=10121&version=12341">see the release notes</a>.  </LI>
 <LI>   
<A href ="http://www.springsource.com/developer/sts">SpringSource Tool Suite</A> lead Martin Lippert has announced the <a href="http…