Oracle announced availability of the Oracle Development Kit for Spring. The new development kit is designed to simplify the development, deployment and management of Spring-based enterprise Java applications.

As developers look to quickly and easily create high-quality applications, they require the freedom to choose the technologies, components and frameworks that best meet their requirements. As a result, developers are increasingly using components of Oracle Fusion Middleware with Spring's leading open source application development framework. Spring's layered architecture allows developers to pick and choose pieces of the framework, which provides optimal flexibility without sacrificing performance.

To help enhance the productivity of developers using Oracle Fusion Middleware products for Java such as Oracle JDeveloper, Oracle's free Integrated Development Environment (IDE), or Oracle Application Server with Spring, the Oracle Development Kit for Spring includes:

-- The Spring Framework 2.0 -- the latest version of Spring's light-weight, open source application development framework; -- Oracle JDeveloper Extension for Spring -- provides wizards and full editor support for both Spring 1.x and 2.0-style definitions complete with code insight, auto-complete and XML validation; -- Oracle Developer Depot -- a free, Spring-based developer productivity tool that dramatically simplifies the way Java developers find, configure and provision Java applications; -- Pre-packaged Sample Applications and Tutorials -- help developers get Spring-based applications up and running quickly; and -- Transaction Manager Integration -- allows developers to leverage the lightweight programming model of Spring with the high-performance transactional capabilities of Oracle Application Server.

"The Spring Framework is a key component in delivering a high quality service to our users, and we look forward to benefiting from the significant effort Oracle is making to tightly integrate Spring with Oracle Application Server," said Colin Clive, ICT Products Development Manager, Student Loans Company Limited.