Spring 2.0 is a major release that makes the Spring Framework both more powerful and easier to use. In this presentation, Rod will survey the new features of Spring 2.0, before focusing on two of the most important: the introduction of extensible XML configuration, and significant enhancements to Spring AOP.

Spring 2.0 allows Spring configuration to be enhanced with custom XML tags, which can provide valuable abstraction for repeated or complex configuration tasks. Rod will show how to define new tags, and how this capability will benefit all Spring users.

Spring 2.0 makes Spring AOP both simpler and far more powerful, and marks a major milestone for AOP in general. In conjunction with AspectJ 5, Spring 2.0 provides a complete roadmap for AOP usage, from dynamic proxies up to full use of AspectJ weaving, using the same programming model. It becomes possible to use the powerful AspectJ pointcut expression language in Spring AOP, as in AspectJ. Spring AOP can even run AspectJ annotation-style aspects within its proxy based runtime, with the same low cost of adoption as Spring AOP.