Breaking News: Java World Has been Stirring Up by Spring

Posted by Charles | April 29, 2008 .

InfoQ just revealed a very significant new development in the Java world, SpringSource launches a new application server without following the Java EE standards.

According to InfoQ:

SpringSource Application Platform is not a Java EE application server. While it does support WAR deployment, EAR deployment is not supported nor are some other EE specs such as EJB. The SpringSource Application Platform has been designed from the ground up to instead focus directly on supporting the widely used Spring Portfolio of open source projects. Specifically, the application server builds on the Spring Portfolio programming model leveraging Spring Dynamic Modules for OSGi-based deployment. SpringSource has created a “kernel” of logging, tracing, bootstrap, classloading, management and other features on top of the Eclipse Foundation’s Equinox OSGi runtime environment. Tomcat is included as an OSGi bundle to support web functionality.

I have been wondering outside of the Java world for awhile only because the whole Java thing was not that cool anymore. Actually it’s quite dull lately. The new Spring platform may actually change that. Here are a few thoughts coming to my mind:

Is it about time now to talk about Java framework vs Ruby on Rails? Dusting off the heavy JEE standards, the Spring platform might be a good answer to all the Rails’ laughs toward Java.
Does this means Java has a chance now to compete the LAMP domination at the web platforms, especially among all the startups?
Are we going to see cheap Spring platform hosting soon, as those LAMP and Rails hosting places all over the web?
How about the Spring Platform virtual machine on Amazon EC2 or other clouds?

One thing for sure though, the Java world could be different from now on.