Changes in version 2.5.4 (2008-04-28)
-------------------------------------

General
* upgraded to AspectJ 1.6 (while retaining compatibility with AspectJ 1.5.x)
* fixed spring-core.jar's manifest to contain correct OSGi Import-Package declaration
* removed superfluous DynamicImport-Package declarations from OSGi manifests
* all decorator proxies are using identity hash code of the proxy instead of the InvocationHandler hash code now

Package org.springframework.aop
* fixed various AspectJ expression evaluation bugs through upgrading aspectjweaver.jar to AspectJ 1.6

Package org.springframework.beans
* added CharsetEditor for JDK 1.4's "java.nio.charset.Charset" class to default property editors
* BeanWrapper explicitly finds default PropertyEditor according to "Editor" suffix convention
* deprecated BeanWrapper's fallback to the global JavaBeans PropertyEditorManager
* DirectFieldAccessor registers Spring's common default PropertyEditors (like BeanWrapperImpl does)
* fixed AbstractBeanDefinition to properly include qualifiers and primary flag in equals comparison
* AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory's handling of lazy-init singletons is thread-safe again
* AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory only invokes "predictBeanType" post-processor method for non-null bean Class

Package org.springframework.core
* introduced InfrastructureProxy interface for resource proxies to be implemented if supposed to be considered as equal
* DefaultResourceLoader's ClassPathContextResource also returns ClassPathContextResource from "createRelative"
* PathMatchingResourcePatternResolver resolves encoded jar URIs before creating JarFiles (for WebSphere compatibility)
* PathMatchingResourcePatternResolver catches NoClassDefFoundError when looking for presence of Equinox classes
* SimpleMetadataReaderFactory uses ResourceLoader's ClassLoader for loading annotation classes (for OSGi compatibility)

Package org.springframework.jdbc
* JdbcTemplate explicitly detects and skips null ResultSets returned from CallableStatement
* BeanPropertySqlParameterSource avoids default use of JDBC 3.0's Types.BOOLEAN (for compatibility with MySQL)

Package org.springframework.jms
* fixed CachedMessageProducer to initialize its deliveryMode, priority and timeToLive fields with the target's settings

Package org.springframework.orm
* fixed Hibernate 3.2 support to flush updates before queries even within purely Spring-managed JTA transactions
* Hibernate3 LocalSessionFactoryBean sets new SpringTransactionFactory as default in case of no JTA TransactionManager

Package org.springframework.remoting
* JndiRmiClientInterceptor/ProxyFactoryBean work for JNDI objects which do not implement the Remote interface as well

Package org.springframework.test
* "executeSqlScript" (as in SimpleJdbcTestUtils) allows for multi-line statements, each separated by a semicolon

Package org.springframework.transaction
* TransactionSynchronizationManager automatically unwraps InfrastructureProxy objects for raw key comparisons
* AbstractFallbackTransactionAttributeSource uses concurrent Map for attribute cache in order to avoid lock contention

Package org.springframework.validation
* AbstractPropertyBindingResult's "formatFieldValue" finds PropertyEditor according to "Editor" suffix convention too
* DefaultBindingErrorProcessor registers "missing field" errors within specified nested path (if any)

Package org.springframework.web
* added "findParameterValue" convenience method to WebUtils
* ContextLoader uses its own ClassLoader for loading the default strategy (XmlWebApplicationContext)
* added "contextAttribute" property (for WebApplicationContext retrieval) to DelegatingFilterProxy and FrameworkServlet
* RequestContext does not fail when WebApplicationContext's ServletContext is null (like in a plain Portlet environment)
* HandlerMethodInvoker does not copy whole model Set for session attribute exposure anymore (avoiding lazy value init)
* fixed JSP form tags to properly return SKIP_BODY instead of the non-defined EVAL_PAGE (for WebLogic compatibility)


Changes in version 2.5.3 (2008-04-06)
-------------------------------------

General
* replaced junit-4.4.jar in with-dependencies distribution with official JUnit 4.4 jar
* spring.jar does not include InstrumentationSavingAgent class anymore (for parent-last class loaders)
* spring-context.jar includes optional OSGi imports for "context:annotation-config"'s autodetection purposes
* Spring reference documentation covers JSF 1.2 and contains updated Struts 2.0 and Tapestry references
* Spring reference documentation covers annotation-based controllers in Portlet chapter

Package org.springframework.aop
* deprecated ProxyFactoryBean's support for a target as last element in "interceptorNames" in favor of "targetName"
* ProxyFactoryBean assumes a target bean if type cannot be determined for last element in "interceptorNames" list
* AbstractAutoProxyCreator predicts proxy class as bean type if known already (instead of predicting the target class)
* AbstractAutoProxyCreator exposes early singleton proxies (for resolving circular reference between proxied beans)
* "bean(...)" pointcut designator matches against bean name aliases as well, not just against the canonical bean name

Package org.springframework.beans
* CharacterEditor's "allowEmpty" only translates empty String to null, keeping a single space String as space character
* CustomNumberEditor treats number with leading zeros as decimal (removed unwanted octal support while preserving hex)
* GenericTypeAwarePropertyDescriptor respects "propertyEditorClass" specified on original PropertyDescriptor
* renamed ListableBeanFactory's "includePrototypes" flag to "includeNonSingletons" (affects javadoc only)
* added "getEarlyBeanReference" hook to SmartInstantiationAwareBeanPostProcessor interface
* AbstractBeanFactory does not log full exception stack trace (at debug level) on FactoryBean type check anymore
* AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory allows for resolving circular reference between beans wrapped by BeanPostProcessors
* DefaultListableBeanFactory passes full inherited AccessControlContext to the AccessController for bean creation
* DefaultListableBeanFactory does not eagerly initialize target beans when autowiring a PriorityOrdered post-processor
* PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer supports nested keys in placeholder keys as well (e.g. "${db.${environment}}")
* PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer works properly even in case of default-autowire="byType" with FactoryBeans involved
* fixed PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer's "nullValue" handling to avoid NPE for nested value
* added "ignoreUnresolvableEditors" property to CustomEditorConfigurer, allowing to ignore type/editor classes not found
* XmlBeanDefinitionReader's "getValidationModeForResource" method is protected now in order to allow for overriding
* AbstractSimpleBeanDefinitionParser properly ignores namespace declaration attributes ("xmlns"/"xmlns:")
* AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor processes @Autowired annotation on most specific method only (when overriding)
* AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor marks @Autowired bean properties as processed (for @Required to accept them)

Package org.springframework.context
* ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource is able to detect updates for a properties file stored in a jar/zip as well
* AbstractApplicationContext's temporary ClassLoader explicitly excludes types to match (for OSGi LTW compatibility)
* restored support for null location array argument in ClassPathXmlApplicationContext (for Apache CXF compatibility)
* added "registration" attribute to mbean-export element, accepting "failOnExisting"/"ignoreExisting"/"replaceExisting"
* CommonAnnotationBeanPostProcessor processes @Resource annotation on most specific method only (when overriding)
* revised default annotation post-processor ordering to apply most specific processors first

Package org.springframework.core
* Conventions detects special generated subclasses (e.g. by OpenJPA) and derives the variable name from the superclass
* revised LocalVariableTableParameterNameDiscoverer to avoid potential NPE in case of no parameter names found on Java 5
* revised DefaultValueStyler (and deprecated ReflectiveVisitorHelper) for better performance and no class loader leaks
* StaticLabeledEnumResolver uses weak references to LabeledEnum class in order to avoid class loader leaks
* added "lastModified()" method to Resource interface, for abstract access to the last-modified timestamp
* ClassPathResource and UrlResource use the last-modified timestamp of the archive file for jar/zip contents
* PathMatchingResourcePatternResolver sets "useCaches=false" on any JarURLConnection that it opens for path matching
* PathMatchingResourcePatternResolver detects WebSphere 6.1 "bundleresource:" URLs and resolves them for path matching

Package org.springframework.ejb
* added "cacheSessionBean" flag to SimpleRemoteStatelessSessionProxyFactoryBean, for caching the session bean object
* added "cache-session-bean" attribute to "jee:remote-slsb" configuration element
* Spring 2.5 "jee:*" config elements use resource-ref="true" by default (non-resource-ref names will still work as well)

Package org.springframework.jdbc
* JndiDataSourceLookup uses "resourceRef"=true by default (being able to resolve J2EE "jdbc/myDb" ENC names by default)
* NativeJdbcExtractorAdapter only processes DatabaseMetaData Connection if non-null (for WebLogic cluster compatibility)
* fixed SQLException translation for IBM DB2 and MS SQL to operate on error codes first, just falling back to SQL state
* added MySQL NDB error codes and further DB2 error codes to default "sql-error-codes.xml" file
* factored out common AbstractColumnMaxValueIncrementer base class from Derby/Hsql/MySQLMaxValueIncrementer
* added DB2MainframeSequenceMaxValueIncrementer for DB2/390 and DB2/400 (differing from DB2 UDB for Unix and Windows)
* added "wrapAsLob" property to DefaultLobHandler, for passing Blob/Clob instances to the JDBC driver (for PostgreSQL)
* DefaultLobHandler's "streamAsLob" setting (requires JDBC 4.0) applies to byte array and String arguments as well
* JdbcTemplate creates LinkedHashMap (instead of plain HashMap) as default results Map returned from "call" operation
* JdbcDaoSupport does not override specified JdbcTemplate on subsequent "setDataSource" call for same DataSource
* NamedParameterJdbcTemplate ignores Postgres-style "::" casting operator (i.e. not treated as named parameter)
* SimpleJdbcInsert supports "autoGeneratedKey" simulation using "insert ... returning" for PostgreSQL 8.2 and later
* SimpleJdbcCall supports metadata lookup of procedure columns for PostgreSQL (requires JDBC driver 8.3 or later)

Package org.springframework.jms
* SingleConnectionFactory accepts "Connections.setClientID" calls with the same client ID as specified on the factory
* SingleConnectionFactory accepts further "Connection.setExceptionListener" calls in "reconnectOnException" mode
* introduced CachingConnectionFactory (as subclass of SingleConnectionFactory) for JMS 1.1 session and producer pooling
* SimpleMessageListenerContainer registers itself as ExceptionListener for automatic Connection recovery
* added "runningAllowed()" template method to DefaultMessageListenerContainer, allowing subclass to temporarily suspend
* DefaultMessageListenerContainer scales concurrent invokers eagerly in case of a sudden burst (revised idle handling)
* DefaultMessageListenerContainer uses a "maxMessagesPerTask" default of 10 when associated with a ScheduledTaskExecutor
* DefaultMessageListenerContainer propagates JMSExceptions thrown from a listener, potentially triggering recovery
* MessageListenerAdapter propagates JMSExceptions thrown from listener method as-is (no wrapping in runtime exception)
* MessageListenerAdapter invokes target (SessionAware)MessageListener immediately, not extracting the content upfront
* added "cache" attribute to "jms:listener-container" configuration element, for customizing the resource cache level

Package org.springframework.jmx
* MBeanExporter's autodetection does not cause CannotLoadBeanClassException for lazy-init beans (Spring 2.0 compatible)

Package org.springframework.jndi