After 6 months of work, Spring Web Services 1.5.0 has been release. Based off contract-first development using SOAP service development, Spring-WS can be manipulated through XML to create document-driven Web services. Some of the highlights of the release include:
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Two new transports: JMS and email, both for client and server
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WSS4J-based WS-Security implementation, which allows for WS-Security on non-SUN JDKs (i.e. WebSphere) and JDK 1.4
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WS-Addressing support for both client and server, supporting the August 2004 and final versions of the specification
Arjen Poutsma goes into detail about how some of the new features work, showing how these new changes can be implemented. There are examples of how to implement the new transports as well as an overview of some of the other features in this release. Aljern also provides feedback on design decisions and future functionality of Spring-WS.
Other feature include:
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Spring-WS jars are now OSGi bundles,
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A new, client-side interception mechanism, including WS-Security support,
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@Endpoints are now @Components, so they are automatically picked up when using Spring 2.5 component scanning
The 1.5 release is 95% backwards compatible, and comment in the Spring forums have been positive when it comes to upgrading For a full list of the features in the release see the release announcement. Also see a recent InfoQ interview with Arjen Poutsma that goes more into detail about Spring-WS and some if its methodologies.