Question

Right now I am trying to research on how stable Spring release are right now. I’m having problems determining whether the most current Spring release (3.1.1) is the best choice for a base architecture. Are there any differences between 3.0 and 3.1? If so are there any impact in terms of coding structure just like migrating from spring 2.0 to 3.0. Currently we have a base architecture for Spring 2.0 and we are thinking of migrating to 3.X for integrated AJAX support and integrated REST support as well. Are there any other perks in migrating to 3.X? Is it good idea to migrate to Spring 3.0? If yes are there any drawbacks in migrating also which version is the best to migrate to? Thanks for taking time in reading this, have a nice day.

Answer 1

Are there any differences between 3.0 and 3.1?

http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.1.x/changelog.txt

EDIT:
ok, it that’s too technical, try this:

http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.1.x/spring-framework-reference/html/new-in-3.1.html

EDIT 2:
no, you do not have to use annotations. That’s just a convenience feature mostly.

EDIT 3:
in Implementing Controllers all annotation based configurations have their XML-schema based counterparts. That said, unless you have very good reasons against annotations, you might try to gradually switch to this paradigm, as it is easier to read thus easier to maintain. (at least in in my opinion)