The Spring Framework Rich Client Project (aka spring-rcp), release 1.0 ----------------------------------------------------- http://www.springframework.org 1. INTRODUCTION The Spring Rich Client Project (RCP) is a sub-project of The Spring Framework. Spring-RCP's mission is to provide an elegant way to build highly-configurable, GUI-standards-following rich-client applications faster by leveraging the Spring Framework, and a rich library of UI factories and support classes. Initial focus is on providing support for Swing applications but a goal of Spring-RCP is to be view agnostic as much as possible. The Spring Framework is a layered Java/J2EE application framework, based on code published in "Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development" by Rod Johnson (Wrox, 2002). Spring includes: * Powerful JavaBeans-based configuration management, applying Inversion-of-Control principles. This makes wiring up applications quick and easy. No more singletons littered throughout your codebase, no more arbitrary properties files: one consistent and elegant approach everywhere. This core bean factory can be used in any environment, from applets to J2EE containers. * Generic abstraction layer for transaction management, allowing for pluggable transaction managers, and making it easy to demarcate transactions without dealing with low-level issues. Generic strategies for JTA and a single JDBC DataSource are included. In contrast to plain JTA or EJB CMT, Spring's transaction support is not tied to J2EE environments. * JDBC abstraction layer that offers a meaningful exception hierarchy (no more pulling vendor codes out of SQLException), simplifies error handling, and greatly reduces the amount of code you'll need to write. You'll never need to write another finally block to use JDBC again. The JDBC-oriented exceptions comply to Spring's generic DAO exception hierarchy. * Integration with Hibernate, JDO, and iBATIS SQL Maps: in terms of resource holders, DAO implementation support, and transaction strategies. First-class Hibernate support with lots of IoC convenience features, addressing many typical Hibernate integration issues. All of these comply to Spring's generic transaction and DAO exception hierarchies. * AOP functionality, fully integrated into Spring configuration management. You can AOP-enable any object managed by Spring, adding aspects such as declarative transaction management. With Spring, you can have declarative transaction management without EJB... even without JTA, if you're using a single database in Tomcat or another web container without JTA support. * Flexible MVC web application framework, built on core Spring functionality. This framework is highly configurable via strategy interfaces, and accommodates multiple view technologies like JSP, Velocity, Tiles, iText, and POI. Note that a Spring middle tier can easily be combined with a web tier based on any other web MVC framework, like Struts, WebWork, or Tapestry. You can use all of Spring's functionality in any J2EE server, and most of it also in non-managed environments. A central focus of Spring is to allow for reusable business and data access objects that are not tied to specific J2EE services. Such objects can be reused across J2EE environments (web or EJB), standalone applications, test environments, etc without any hassle. Spring has a layered architecture. All its functionality builds on lower levels. So you can e.g. use the JavaBeans configuration management without using the MVC framework or AOP support. But if you use the web MVC framework or AOP support, you'll find they build on the configuration framework, so you can apply your knowledge about it immediately. 2. RELEASE INFO NOTE: This information is outdated, see http://spring-rich-c.sf.net Sprint-RCP requires J2SE 1.4 and the core SpringFramework. Integration is provided with Log4J 1.2,CGLIB 1.0, Jakarta Commons Attributes, and Jakarta Commons Lang 2.0. Release contents: * "src" contains the Java source files for the framework * "test" contains the Java source files for Spring's test suite * "dist" contains various Spring distribution JAR files * "lib" contains all third-party libraries needed for running the samples and/or building the framework * "docs" contains general documentation and API javadocs * "samples" contains demo applications and skeletons The "lib" directory is just included in the "-with-dependencies" download. Make sure to download this full distribution ZIP file if you want to run the sample applications and/or build the framework yourself. Ant build scripts for the framework and the samples are provided. The standard samples can be built with the included Ant runtime by invoking the corresponding "build.bat" files (see samples subdirectories). Latest info is available at the public website: http://www.springframework.org Project info at the SourceForge site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/springframework The Spring Framework is released under the terms of the Apache Software License (see license.txt). All libraries included in the "-with-dependencies" download are subject to their respective licenses. This product includes software developed by the Apache Software Foundation (http://www.apache.org). This product includes software developed by Clinton Begin (http://www.ibatis.com). 3. DISTRIBUTION JAR FILES The "dist" directory contains the following distinct JAR files for use in applications. Both module-specific JAR files and a JAR file with all of Spring are provided. The following list specifies the respective contents and third-party dependencies. Libraries in brackets are optional, i.e. just necessary for certain functionality. * "spring-richclient" (~380 KB) - Contents: The rich-client project - Dependencies: Commons Logging, (Log4J) * "spring-rcp-resources" (~128 KB) - Contents: Rich set of images and icons to support rich-clients - Dependencies: None. Note: The above lists of third-party libraries assume J2SE 1.4 as foundation. 4. WHERE TO START? Documentation can be found in the "docs" directory: * the Spring reference documentation * various configuration and integration tutorials * various Spring-related articles Documented sample applications and skeletons can be found in "samples": * "petclinic" "Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development" discusses many of Spring's design ideas in detail. Note: The code examples in the book refer to the original framework version that came with the book. Thus, they need to be adapted for the current Spring release.
shevek/spring-rich-client
A fork of the official Spring Rich Client project, ported to Spring 3.x
JavaApache-2.0