Chapter 2. What's new in Spring 2.0?

2.1. Introduction
If you have been using the Spring Framework for some time, you will be aware that Spring has just undergone
a major revision.
JDK Support
The Spring Framework continues to be totally compatible with all versions of Java since (and including)
Java 1.3. This means that 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5 are supported, although some advanced functionality of the
Spring Framework may not be available to you if you are (for example) committed to using Java 1.3.
This revision includes a host of new features, and a lot of the existing functionality has been reviewed and
improved. In fact, so much of Spring is shiny and improved that the Spring development team decided that the
next release of Spring merited an increment of the version number; and so Spring 2.0 was announced in
December 2005 at the Spring Experience conference in Florida.
This chapter is a guide to the new and improved features of Spring 2.0. It is intended to provide a high-level
summary so that seasoned Spring architects and developers can become immediately familiar with the new
Spring 2.0 functionality. For more in-depth information on the features, please refer to the corresponding
sections hyperlinked from within this chapter.
Some of the new and improved functionality described below has been (or will be) backported into the Spring
1.2.x release line. Please do consult the changelogs for the 1.2.x releases to see if a feature has been backported.