A few days ago SpringSource announced that the 4.0 version of the popular Spring framework is on the road. The next iteration will be Spring Framework 4.0!

As SpringSource states, the focus of the upcoming version is on “emerging enterprise themes in 2013 and beyond”:

• Support for Java SE 8 Spring applications
• Configuring and implementing Spring-style applications using Groovy 2
• Support for key Java EE 7 technologies (like JMS 2.0, JPA 2.1, Servlet 3.1, JCache etc.)
• Support for WebSocket-style application architectures (support for JSR-356 compliant runtimes)
• Fine-grained eventing and messaging within the application (using listener mechanisms)
• Removing the fat by pruning deprecated features

According to the roadmap, there will be another one-year iteration so that the framework will reach 4.0 GA by the end of 2013. A first Spring Framework 4.0 milestone will be released as early as April. Unitl then, you may check some of our Spring tutorials.

So brace yourselves everyone, Spring 4.0 is coming!