Hi Spring fans and welcome to another installment of This Month in Spring! As we write this I'm in the last stretch of the year, concluding as many visits with as many people as possible. I've just arrived in Beijing, China. I was just in St. Petersburg, RU; San Francisco, US; Hartford, USA and Paris, FR; but I've got many miles to go before I sleep, sometime in December! I'll be visiting communities and customers in (no particular order): Tokyo, JP; Milan, IT; Singapore; Hong Kong; Taipei, TW; Seoul, SK; Los Angeles, US; Zurich, CH; Toronto, CA; and Seattle, US. We'll see if anything else, ahem, springs up! If you're going to be in any of these places, as always, don't hesitate to say hello! (Or, if you use WeChat, you can find my WeChat barcode on my About page.)

I'm trying to keep busy but it seems, no matter how much I try, I can't outpace the incredible, bombastic Spring community!  Time sure flies! Can you believe we're already staring down 2019? Let's see what's happened in the last 30-ish days!

• the "Bean" release train for Spring Session has just been released!
• The folks at Alibaba have been working hard and just released the new Spring Cloud for Alibaba
• Reactor Bismuth-SR13 and Californium-SR2 are now available
• Spring Boot 2.1.0 is now available! Get the latest and greatest bits NOW!
• Spring Integrtation 5.1 goes GA!
• Spring for Apache Kafka 2.2 Released
• Spring Data Lovelace SR2 released
• Spring Cloud Function – 2.0.0.RC1 – is now available
• Spring Framework 5.1.2 available now
• Spring Session for Apache Geode/Pivotal GemFire 2.0.6.RELEASE and 2.1.0.RELEASE Available!
• Spring Cloud Data Flow 1.7 GA Released
• Spring Cloud Finchley.SR2 Is Available
• Mark Heckler's Spring Noticias en Español, a resource for Spanish-reading viewers, is forewith available on his dedicated page
• This is very cool: Netflix uses Zipkin and Spring Cloud Sleuth for tracing!
• Check out this epic talk on InfoQ, A Guide to "Reactive" for Spring MVC Developers
• This is useful – it generates a form based on Java objects (which can include Spring Data-managed entities): jWebForm
• I've started consuming The Java Functional and Reactive Weekly. You might dig it too.
• A nice article on Reactive Programming With Project Reactor
• Fellow Java Champion [Arun Gupta, Twitter, has just shared an interesting example on how to build a custom Spring Boot-flavored JRE in Java 9 or better to reduce the size of containers. His example gets a 490 MB Docker image for a Spring Boot application cut down to 162 MB by creating custom JRE using JDK11
• This is a very cool writeup on how to use JUnit5 and Spring Cloud Contract
• Functional Bean Registrations in Spring Cloud Function
• Spring Cloud Data Flow 1.7 RC1 released
• How Welcoming is the Spring Community for Apprentice Developers? A Recent Survey Says We Can Do Better.
• Spring IO Platform Cairo-SR5
• Spring IO Platform Brussels-SR14
• Spring Cloud Edgware.SR5 Has Been Released
• Spring Boot 2.1.0 RC1 available now
• Codecentric Spring Boot Admin 2.0.4 out now! Primarily a bunch of bugfixes. Here's the announcement
• Check out the seamless Spring Cloud integration with Azure services
• Maciej Walkowiak's 10 minutes-long video introducing Spring Data JDBC is worth a look
• Check out this awesome series of posts from Datadog that puts together the best Pivotal Cloud Foundry architecture overview I've seen, and explains key metrics
• How to Run Any Dockerized Application on Spring Cloud Data Flow
• Antoine Rey has just announced that the Spring PetClinic community has now its own website
• I love this InfoQ psot: an Introduction to Kotlin for Serverside Java Developers
• Nils Hartmann created a short video that shows how you can develop your Java Spring Boot applications using Visual Studio Code
• I love this post explaining how a static Spring Batch property mapper would work
• Sergei Egorov points out that Dependabot is going to support Spring Boot's Gradle dependency management plugin
• Make sure you register for this upcoming November 8th webinar, "Everything You Wanted to Know About Serverless But Were Afraid to Ask", by Function-as-a-service Project Riff lead Mark Fisher and Forester's John Rymer
• I'm pretty honored to have just been made a member of the Oracle "Groundbreaker" community – thanks, Oracle!
• Playing around with Kotlin and Spring Webflux
• Benjamin Wilms just announced the next BIG release of Chaos Monkey for Spring Boot including Micrometer metrics, customized attacks on your methods at runtime and much more! Take a look!
• GraphQL – The Future of Microservices?
• Introduction to Reactive APIs with Postgres, R2DBC, Spring Data JDBC and Spring WebFlux
• Toshiaki Maki points out that the Cloud Foundry Java Buildpack, v4.16.1, shipped with JDK 11.0.1 support
• Have you seen the Spring-based SOA framework from Alibaba called Dubbo, now in incubation at Apache?
• I loved the Snyk JVM Ecosystem Report for 2018; it's good to see so many people using Spring!
• the R2DBC project has a new home in the Spring Data projects!
• Advanced Functional Testing in Spring Boot Using Docker in Tests
• Check out this new version of the legendary Spring Petclinic, based on the new Spring Data JDBC
• Spring Security OAuth 2.3.4, 2.2.3, 2.1.3, 2.0.16 Released
• Rossen Stoyanchev has just announced the publication, and resolution for, two CVEs affecting Spring – READ THIS!
• Spring Boot 2.0.6
• Spring Session Apple SR6 Released
• Spring Security 5.1.1, 5.0.9, and 4.2.9 Released
• Spring Boot 1.5.17
• Some nice posts here for the Spanish-language readers
• Spring Data Lovelace SR1, Kay SR11, and Ingalls SR16 released
• Spring Framework 5.1.1, 5.0.10 and 4.3.20 available now
• Juergen Hoeller, Pivotal—Current and Future State of Java, SpringOne Platform 2018
• Nice whitepaper by Uli Homann, Distinguished Architect, Microsoft and Josh McKenty, Vice President & Field CTO, Pivotal on cloud flexibility
• https://twitter.com/springframework/status/1052293878559244288
• Jakub Pilimon put together a nice look at how Spring supports CQRS
• Wow! The Spring Boot project has almost 500 contributors!
• I love Richard Seroter's recent series on all the things you may not have been aware that Cloud Foundry could run
• Thymeleaf Spring Security integration 3.0.3 (with Spring Security 5 + WebFlux support)
• Are you interested in presenting? Bruno Souza, a legend in his own right, and I had a discussion on how to help people present. It's a bit meta. I hope it's useful. I would love to be made irrelevant 🙂 The more people out there helping disseminate good, sound technology practice, the better! Want to give a talk? Do it! You know I'm always happy to support such initiatives, right? My DM's are open!
• Want to build upon the stack being used to power one of the largest e-commerce engines on the planet, Alibaba? They're using Spring Cloud! They've even adapted and open-sourced their proprietary infrastructure into a project called Nacos, which they introduce here
• There's also some really compelling new stuff in store for Flyway in the new Spring Boot! Check it out!
• Whew! Some good stuff coming to Spring Cloud Contract via this massive PR to Rest Assured submitted by the Spring Cloud Contract ninja Olga Maciaszek-Sharma
• Nice Spanish-language post on building CRUD and REST applications with Kotlin and Spring Boot
• I did an interview that has been translated into Russian – check it out!
• There is a ton of Spring-related content to come out of this Microsoft Ignite 2018 event – check it out!
• The Livelessons videos that Spring Security lead Rob Winch and I put together are coming soon! Check this page on Oct 25, 2018.
• Christoph Nahr has put together a nice post that, while not strictly speaking about Spring, will certainly serve the Spring user quite well: it looks at what's been removed in Java 11 (which, of course, you are already using, right?)
• The Okta Developer blog features a new post on build a mobile app with React Native and Spring Boot – check it out!
• This isn't, strictly speaking, a Spring related post but it's interesting: how to build Java runtime for non-modular applications using jlink in Java 9+.
• This post – on projections with Spring Data JPA – is quite handy / thoughtful. Check it out!
• Want to learn about reactive programming? Check out the code and slides to Rob Winch's epic Intro to Reactive Programming
• Spring Cloud Open Service Broker 3.0.0.M1 released
• Spring Cloud Open Service Broker 2.1.0.M1 released
• This is pretty cool! we're excited to announce, along with Heroku and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, that the Cloud Natives Buildpacks technology was accepted int he CNCF!
• Hola mundo! Read Spanish? Know someone who does? You might appreciate this curated list of interesting reading, en Español!
• Happy Ada Lovelace day! As you know, we name each Spring Data release train after a prominent computer scientist. This one is named for Ada Lovelace, an English mathematician and writer, she was chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Once you're done reading more into this hero and this self described "poetical scientist", you might also read up on the new features our current Spring Data Lovelace release train!
• Check out part two of Richard Seroter's epic series on routing in Cloud Foundry
• I love this blog that looks at flatMap in the context of reactive programming as, for example, you might use it in Pivotal's Reactor
• Check out the new configuration styles supported in Spring Fu
• Check out this post on logging with Graylog in a Spring Boot application
• This is an interesting new initiative! Hopefully we'll see more videos like this from community member Maciej Walkowiak
• We want to hear from you! Check out this Github issue on JUnit 5 support with Spring Boot. Sound off! We want your feedback!
• Jaxenter continues its series looking at Java 11 with different folks in the Java ecosystem, including yours truly. This latest post looks at some of the cleverest hacks in Java 11
• this is your system on kafka and zipkin!
• I loved this post on Cassandra schema migration with Spring Boot projects
• Check out Spring founder and Atomist CEO Rod Johnson's SpringOne Platform 2018 talk
• Spring Framework 5.2 looks to be a heckuva release! It includes, among other things, RSocket and non-blocking event listeners.
• I love this Okta post, "Add User Authentication to Your Spring Boot App in 15 Minutes"
• Flyway 5.2.0 Released – Flyway 5.2.0 – Flyway by Boxfuse • Database Migrations Made Easy.
• A nice post on versioning RESTful services with Spring Boot
• Want to learn more about the motivations underpinning our support of R2DBC, an approach to reactive data access for SQL-based data stores? Check this post out!
• Did you miss SpringOne Platform 2018? (Why? It was epic!) Check out this YouTube playlist with all the videos that are up. Great job Pieter Humphrey!
• InfoQ have a nice post on our initial support for RSocket announced at SpringOne Platform 2018. Check it out!
• Among the many gems we debuted at SpringOne Platform 2018 was this gem, R2DBC, a reactive data access API for SQL datastores. Watch this video by R2DBC ninja Ben Hale for more.
• Check out this talk introducing reactive MongoDB transactions, streaming and more
• https://twitter.com/cloudfoundry/status/1047864637595770881
• Spring Fu lead Sébastien Deleuze has put together a post illuminating some of the new features in Spring Fu and the brand Spring JaFu configuration style, which brings the originally Kotlin-only functional style to Java developers. I love the possibilities here! Dr. Dave Syer, never one to rest on his proverbial laurels, followed up with a Maven-based example that demonstrates Spring JaFu in action. NB: you'll need to install an artifact in the master snapshots for this to work (at the moment)
• Spring Vault 2.1 GA released
• Wanna change the world? You've got to ACT! That's what we're doing at Pivotal, anyway. Ready on the learn more about our new initiative supporting humanitarian work!
• Spring Data Elasticsearch just merged a PR to switch to the high-level REST client! Sweet nectar!
• Miss SpringOne Platform 2018 last week? Check out this rock-solid recap post from last week by Diógenes Rettori!
• What's new in Spring Data Lovelace?
• What's new in Spring Data Lovelace for MongoDB?
• Spring Security 5.1 goes GA
• The Reactive Revolution at SpringOne Platform 2018 (part 1/N)
• Spring Batch 4.1.0.RC1 is now available
• What's new in Spring Data Lovelace for Redis and Apache Cassandra?
• This is a very cool post: Kotlin and MongoDB: a perfect match!
• Spring Data Lovelace & Neo4j-OGM 3.1.3 went GA – neo4j – Medium
• This is pretty cool! It's a look at the @SpringBootApplication annotation from Spring Boot.
• Good news everyone! Heck, tons of good news! Last week Java 11 dropped and so Ben Hale and the Cloud Foundry Java buildpack team, ever busy, have already updated the Cloud Foundry Java buildpack to support Java 11 for you! Online buildpacks are available now, and offline buildpacks shortly. NB: Java 11 isn't the default, but there'll come a day when it might be so test your apps..!
• Check out some of the new features demonstrating the tight integration between Spring and Kotlin in the new IntelliJ release
• This is an interesting podcast episode of the "Talking Kotlin" podcast on the use of Kotlin and Spring by the folks working at Allegro, a giant ecommerce engine in Poland
• Yet another epic blog on the new features supporting Spring and Kotlin's integration in IntelliJ
• Check out these interviews with me, among others, on sessions to attend at the upcoming Oracle Code One show
• I was lucky enough to be part of a JAXEnter panel discussion on the features and future of Java 11. Another installment, Does Java 11 tick all the right boxes, is out and well worth a read
• InfoQ have a nice post on the new (experimental) Reactive Relational Database Connectivity Driver project, R2DBC, Announced at SpringOne Platform 2018 last week. Check it out!
• Not related to Java, per se, but interesting nonetheless: Snyk have a nice post detailing some security practices for Apache Maven worth investigating.
• Excited about RSocket and Netifi? Check out their SpringOne Platform 2018 demo!
• There's still lots of innovating happening at Netflix. I liked this post on their work around edge load balancing
• SpringOne Platform 2019 will be held in Austin, TX! I'm so looking forward to this show already!
• Want to see a Spring Boot that, when built with Graal VM, can start in 0.005 seconds?
• Neo4j's Michael Simons has just published an update on the support for Spring Data Neo4j in Spring Data Lovelace, which incorporates a Spring Data Neo4j revision that's built on the Neo4j-OGM 3.1.3
• Check out this fantastic demo introducing CQRS using the Spring-powered Axon framework
• This post ages better every day, so allow me to repost.