Jazoon Day 1: Spring 3.0

Java 5+ foundation

even more support for annotated components
BeanFactory returns typed Beans
T getBean(String name, Class<T> requiredType)
TaskExecutor extends java.util.concurrentExecutor
extended AsyncTaskExecutor supports Callables and Futures
Typed ApplicationListener
ApplicationEventMulticaster detects declared event type and filters accordingly.
Annotated Factory Methods
Use of Meta-Annotations
This is indeed really great! It allows to potentially have only annotations from your own packages in your code.

Portfolio rearrangements

Spring OXM now in the core
Revised binding and type conversion infrastructure: Superseeding standard JDK PropertyEditors

Spring Expression Language Unified

a kind of unified EL++
EL default attributes: systemProperties, systemEnvironment, and any spring bean through its name(s)
Contextual attributes depending on scope (access to request/session attributes for example).

REST Support

Client and server side
Defining URIs
JAX-RS

Declarative model validation

Hibernate Validator, JSR 303
Annotating fields with constraint annotations

Support for Portlet 2.0

action/render/event/resource request mappings

Early support for Java EE 6

JSF 2.0
JPA 2.0
JSR 303

New Namespaces

Scheduling namespace
@Async annotation for methods
@Scheduled for cron-triggered methods
Namespace allows scanning of these annotations, and declarative equivalent Expressions
Custom CRON support

Pruning

Commons Attributes support
TopLink API
Subclass-style Struts 1.X

Deprecations

traditional MVC form controller hierarchy: no new features
traditional JUnit 3.8 test class hierarchy => now Test Context framework